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HERE I

A. LIFE OF

Here I Stand

ROLAND H. BAINTON

On an April evening over 400 years ago a simple
monk faced the emperor of the Holy Roman
Empire. His words, heard by only a roomful of
people, have echoed through the centuries:

Aly conscience is captive to the IVord of God.
I cannot and I c u:ill not recant any thin g^ -for to
go against conscience is neither right nor safe.
Here I stand.

Because he took his stand, Martin Luther shat-
tered the structure of medieval Catholicism and
initiated Protestantism.

This authoritative, dramatic biography of
Alartin Luther interprets his experience, his work,
writings, and lasting contributions. \Vith sound
historical scholarship and with keen insight into
Luther's religious problems and values it re-
creates the spiritual setting of the sixteenth cen-
tury 7 ', shows Luther's place within it and his
influence upon it, and brings the spirit and mes-
sage of Martin Luther to life today.

Here 1 Stand is richly illustrated with wood-
cuts and engravings from Luther's own time
satirical cartoons-, ornamented title pages of tracts
and books, including Luther's Bible; and por-
traits of the leaders in the political and religious
struggle. It is rich also in information and quota-
tion from firsthand sources selected from the
whole range of extant sixteenth-century German
writings, including some hitherto unused in any
studies in English. This is a significant contribu-
tion to Protestant faith a vivid, discerning por-
trayal of the man who, because of unshakable
faith in his God, could face his accusers and say:
"Here 1 stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help
-me."

HERE I STAgD

A LIFE OF MARTIN LUTHER
Roland H. Bainton

ABINGDON-COKESBURY PRESS

New York Nashville

HERE I STAND

AH rigbts in tbis book^ are reserved. ^ No part o the
teact may be reproduced In any form ^ritho'ut -written per-
mission of tbe publishers, except brief quotations used
in connection -with reviews in magazines or newspapers.

JttX tjy. MtllTTED, AND BOTTfl> BY THE
PAItXECENOK PRESS, AT NASHVILLE,

XENNESSEJE. TJNITEO STATES OP AMERICA

To my
KATHERINE VON BORA

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PORTIONS of this book have been delivered as the Nathaniel Tay-
lor lectures at the Yale Divinity School, the Carew Lectures at the
Hartford Seminary Foundation, and the Hein Lectures at the Wart-
burg Seminary and Capital University, as well as at the Bonebrake
Theological Seminary, the Gettysburg Theological Seminary, and
the Divinity School of Howard University. For many courtesies on
the part of these institutions I am indebted.

I also thank the firm of J. C. B. Mohr at Tubingen for permis-
sion to reprint as Chapter XXI the article which appeared in the
Gerhard Ritter Festschrift, and the Westminster Press for permis-
sion to use in condensed form certain portions from my Martin
Luther Christmas Book.

Extensive travel and borrowing for this work have not been
necessary because the Yale library is so richly supplied and so
generous in acquiring new material. Especially to Mr. Babb, Mr.
Wing, and Mr. Tinker hearty thanks are tendered by Alartin Luther.

CONTENTS

L THE Vow 21

AT HOME AND SCHOOL

RELIGIOUS DISQUIET

THE HAVEN OF THE COWL

II. THE CLOISTER 37

THE TERROR OF THE HOLY
THE WAY OF SELF-HELP
THE MERITS OF THE SAINTS
THE TRIP TO ROME

EL THE GOSPEL 52

THE FAILURE OF CONFESSION

THE MYSTIC LADDER

THE EVANGELICAL EXPERIENCE

IV. THE ONSLAUGHT 68

THE INDULGENCE FOR ST. PETER'S
THE NINETY-FIVE THESES

y. THE SON OF INIQUITY 84

THE DOMINICAN ASSAULT
THE CASE TRANSFERRED TO GERMANY
THE INTERVIEWS WITH CAJETAN
THREATENING EXILE

VI. THE SAXON Hus 102

THE GAUNTLET OF ECK

THE LEIPZIG DEBATE

THE ENDORSEMENT OF HUS

HERE I STAND

VII. THE GERMAN HERCULES * * . 121

THE HUMANISTS: ERASMUS
MELANCHTHON AND DURER
THE NATIONALISTS: HUTTEN AND SICKINGEN

VIII. THE WILD BOAR IN THE VINEYARD 136

THE SACRAMENTS AND THE THEORY OF THE CHURCH
PROSECUTION RESUMED
THE BULL "EXSURGE"
THE BULL SEEKS LUTHER

IX. THE APPEAL TO CAESAR 151

PUBLICATION OF THE BULL

AGAINST THE EXECRABLE BULL OF ANTICHRIST

THE FREEDOM OF THE CHRISTIAN MAN

X. HERE I STAND 167

A HEARING PROMISED AND RECALLED
THE EMPEROR ASSUMES RESPONSIBILITY
INVITATION TO LUTHER RENEWED
LUTHER BEFORE THE DIET
THE EDICT OF WORMS

XL MY PATMOS 191

AT THE WARTBURG

THE REFORMATION AT WITTENBERG: MONASTICISM

THE MASS

THE OUTBREAK: OF VIOLENCE
XII. THE RETURN OF THE EXILE 205

TURMOIL

THE INVITATION TO COME BACK

THE RETURN TO WITTENBERG

XIII. No OTHER FOUNDATION 215

NATURE, HISTORY, AND PHILOSOPHY
CHRIST THE SOLE REVEALER
THE WORD AND THE SACRAMENTS

CONTENTS

THE MENACE TO MORALS
THE GROUND OF GOODNESS

XIV. REBUILDING THE WALLS 232

THE CALLINGS

ECONOMICS

POLITICS

CHURCH AND STATE

XV. THE MIDDLE WAY 247

HOSTILITY OF THE REFORMED PAPACY

RECOIL OF THE MODERATE CATHOLICS: ERASMUS

DEFECTION OF THE PURITANS: CARLSTADT

THE REVOLUTIONARY SAINTS: MUNTZER

BANISHMENT OF THE AGITATORS

XVI. BEHEMOTH, LEVIATHAN, AND THE GREAT WATERS . . 265

RIVALS: ZWINGLI AND THE ANABAPTISTS

RELIGION AND SOCIAL UNREST

LUTHER AND THE PEASANTS

MUNTZER FOMENTS REBELLION

THE DEBACLE AND THE EFFECT ON THE REFORMATION

XVII. THE SCHOOL FOR CHARACTER 286

KATHERINE VON BORA

DOMESTICITY

CHILDREN AND TABLE TALK

VIEWS OF MARRIAGE

CONSOLATIONS OF HOME

XVIIL THE CHURCH TERRITORIAL 305

DISSEMINATION OF THE REFORM
PRACTICAL CHURCH PROBLEMS
THE GODLY PRINCE
THE PROTEST

PROTESTANT ALLIANCE: THE MARBURG COLLOQUY
THE AUGSBURG CONFESSION

HERE I STAND
XIX. THE CHURCH TUTORIAL 326

THE BIBLE TRANSLATION

DOCTRINAL PROBLEMS IN TRANSLATION

CATECHISMS

LITURGY

MUSIC

HYMNBOOK

XX. THE CHURCH MINISTERIAL 348

PREACHING

SERMON ON THE NATIVITY

EXPOSITION OF JONAH

PRAYER

XXI. THE STRUGGLE FOR FAITH 359

LUTHER'S PERSISTENT STRUGGLE
HIS DEPRESSIONS
THE WAY OF INDIRECTION
WRESTLING WITH THE ANGEL
THE ROCK OF SCRIPTURE

XXII. THE MEASURE OF THE MAN 373

THE BIGAMY OF THE LANDGRAVE
ATTITUDE TO THE ANABAPTISTS
ATTITUDE TO THE JEWS
THE PAPISTS AND THE EMPEROR
THE MEASURE OF THE MAN

BIBLIOGRAPHY . . * . . 387

REFERENCES 397

SOURCES OF ILLUSTRATIONS 407

INDEX .....411

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Woodcuts of School Scenes of Luther's Day 23

A Student Wearing the Donkey Mask 24

Hans and Margaretta Luther by Cranach 26

Fiends Tempting a Dying Man to Abandon Hope 29

Christ the Judge Sitting upon the Rainbow 31

View of the City of Erfurt 32

Sixteenth-Century Monks in a Choir 35

The Augustinian Cloister Luther Entered as a Monk 38

Celebrating the Mass in Luther's Time . . 40

Illustration from Luther's Bible of 1522 43

Monks of the Sixteenth Century 46-49

Wittenberg in 1627 53

Illustrated Title Page of Luther's Bible of 1541 61

Cranach's "Frederick the Wise Adoring the Virgin and Child" . . 70
A Holbein Cartoon Showing True and False Repentance .... 72-73

Portrait of Albert of Brandenburg 75

Cartoon Showing the Hawking of Indulgences 77

The Vendor and His Indulgences 78

The Castle Church at Wittenberg 79

Cartoon Showing Forgiveness of Christ Outweighing

Indulgences from the Pope 81

Spalatin and the Crucified Christ 91

1556 Woodcut of Luther's Interview with Cajetan 94

The Pope as an Ass Playing Bagpipes 96

Reversible Cartoon of Cardinal and Fool 97

Portrait of Philip Melanchthon by Aldegrever 106

HERE I STAND

Portrait of John Eck 107

Fifteenth-Century Cartoon of Antichrist 110

Woodcut of the Leipzig Debate by a Contemporary 113

Luther and Hus Administer the Bread and Wine to the House of

Saxony ,118

Luther Depicted as the German Hercules by Holbein 122

Diirer's "Melancolia" facing 128

Luther and Hutten as Companions in Arms 130

Cartoon Showing Luther and Hutten Bowling Against the Pope . 131

TheEbernburg 132

Title Page of the Bull Against Luther 146

Title Page of Luther's Address to the German Nobility 153

"The Passion of Christ and Antichrist" 156

Title Page of Hutten's Protest Against the Burning of Luther's

Books at Mainz 159

Luther Burning the Papal Bull 165

Title Page of Hutten's Satire on the Bull Against Luther 168

The Diet of Worms and the Public Peace 171

Portrait of Aleander 173

Luther with a Dove Above His Head 174

Luther's First Hearing at Worms 182

Luther's Second Hearing at Worms 187

The Wartburg 193

Luther as Junker George at the Wartburg 194

Luther as the Evangelist Matthew Translating the Scriptures . . . 196

Marriage of Bishops, Monks, and Nuns 199

A Cartoon Against the Image Breakers 207

Portrait of Frederick the Wise 211

Portrait of Luther 222

Title Page of Luther's Tract On the Freedom of the Christian Man . 229

Rebuilding the Walls of Jerusalem 233

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

A Father of a Household at Work 235

From the Title Page of Luther's Tract On Usury 236

Frederick the Wise and Luther Kneeling Before the Crucified Christ 248

Portrait of Duke George 251

Portrait of Thomas Miintzer 260

Peasants Swearing Allegiance to the Bund 271

A Prophecy of Convulsion in 1524 272

Peasants Plundering a Cloister 275

Peasants About to Take Over a Cloister 276

Title Page of Luther's Tract Against the Murderous and Thieving

Hordes of Peasants 279

Surrender of the Upper Swabian Peasants 282-83

Luther Instructs the Peasants 284

Luther in Armor Prepares to Put on the Peasants' Boot 285

A Peasant Taxes Luther as Double-Tongued 285

A Wedding Party in Front of the Church 289

Katherine and Martin in the Year of Their Marriage 291

The Luther Household at Table 294

Cartoon of 1529 Showing Luther as a Seven-Headed Monster . . , 297

Christ Disarms the Pope 306

Luther and Lucifer in League 307

The Devil Delivers a Declaration of War to Luther 308

The Signatures at the Marlburg Colloquy 321

Cranach's "Jacob Wrestling with the Angel" 328

Lemberger's "Jacob Wrestling with the Angel" 329

The Whore of Babylon in Three Editions of Luther's Bible . . 332-33

Four Cuts Illustrating the Catechism 338

Sample of Luther's Hymnbook 343

Songs Praising Luther and Melanchthon 345

Evangelical and Catholic Services Contrasted 349

Illustration of the Nativity from Luther's Bible 353

HERE I STAND

Martyrdom of Heinrich of Zuetphen 360

Devil and Death Harass a Soul in an Unfinished Cranach Drawing . 364

Luther from the Copper Plate by Daniel Hopfer (1523) . . . . 366

"A Mighty Fortress" in Luther's Hand 371

"The Anabaptist Preacher" Adapted from the Title Page of Hosea

in Luther's Bible 376

The Lower Magistrate: John Frederick, Elector of Saxony . . . 381

Luther in the Year of His Death 383

CHRONOLOGY

1483 November 10 Birth of Martin Luther at Eisleben

1484 early summer Family moved to Alansfeld

1497 about Easter Luther goes to school at Magdeburg

1498 Luther goes to school at Eisenach

1501 May Matriculation at Erfurt

1502 September 29 Bachelor of Arts
1505 January 7 Master of Arts

July 2 Thunderstorm and vow

July 17 Enters Augustinian cloister at Erfurt

1507 May 2 First mass

1508 winter Teaches one semester at Wittenberg

1509 October Return to Erfurt

1510 November Journey to Rome

1511 early April Return to Erfurt; transfer to Wittenberg

1512 October 19 Doctor of Theology

1513 August 16 Lectures on Psalms begin

1515 April Lectures on Romans begin

1516 September 7 Lectures on Romans end
October 27 Lectures on Galatians begin

1517 October 31 Posting the ninety-five theses

1518 April 26 Disputation at Heidelberg
July Prierias attacks Luther
August 5 Maximilian writes to the pope
August 7 The pope cites Luther to Rome
August 8 Luther appeals to Frederick
August 25 Melanchthon arrives

August 31 Luther's reply to Prierias

September 26 Luther starts for Augsburg

October 12-14 Interview with Cajetan

October 20-21 Flight from Augsburg
October 30 ' Back in Wittenberg

November 8 The bull Cum Postquam

November 28 Luther appeals to a general council

HERE I STAND

December 2
December 18

1519 January 4-6
January 12
June 28
July 4-14

1520 January
May
June 11

June 15

August
October 6

1520 October 10
November 4
November 12
November

November 28
December 10
December 17

1521 January 3

January 5
January 27
February 10
February 13
February 14
February 17
February 19
February 22
March 2
March 6
March 8
March 26
April 10

Ready to go into exile

Frederick will not banish Luther

Interview of Luther with Miltitz

Death of Emperor Maximilian

Election of Charles V

Leipzig debate between Luther and Eck

Hutten and Sickingen offer Luther help

Sermon on Good Works

Offer of protection from one hundred knights;

The Papacy at Rome
Exsurge Domne gives Luther sixty days to

submit

Address to the German Nobility
Babylonian Captivity
Luther receives the pope's bull
Charles at Cologne promises a hearing
Burning of Luther's books at Cologne
Against the Execrable Bull of Antichrist; On the

Freedom of the Christian Man
Luther invited to Worms
Burning by Luther of the pope's bull
Invitation to Worms rescinded
The bull Decet Romanum Pontificum against

Luther is ready
Frederick arrives at Worms
The diet of Worms opens
The bull against Luther reaches Aleander
Aleander's three-hour speech; the bull is sent back
Glapion's attempts at mediation
Draft of an edict against Luther
Intense opposition
Decision to summon Luther
Second draft of an edict
Invitation to Luther

Edict for sequestration of Luther's books ready
Edict issued
Glapion reports failure of mission to Hutten and

Sickingen
18

CHRONOLOGY

April 16
April 17
April 18
April 19
April 20
April 23-24
April 26
May 4
May 8
May 26
September 22

November 12
December 3-4

December

December 25
December 27
1522 January 6

February 26

March 1-6
September-
May, 1523
September
September 14
March 6
March
Pentecost
Julyl

1523

1524

August 23
September

January-
February
April 18
September

Luther in Worms

First hearing

Second hearing

The emperor announces his decision

Diet requests a committee

Hearings before the committee

Luther leaves Worms

Luther arrives at the Wartburg

Edict of Worms ready

Edict of Worms actually issued

Melanchthon celebrates an evangelical Lord's
Supper

Thirteen monks leave the Augustinian cloister

Tumult at Wittenberg; Luther's flying trip home
and return

Commencement of the New Testament transla-
tion; work on the Sermon Postils

Carlstadt gives wine in the mass to laity

Zwickau prophets in Wittenberg

Disbanding of the Augustinian Congregation at
Wittenberg

Justus Jonas, minister of the Castle Church at
Wittenberg, marries

Luther's return to Wittenberg

Sickingen's campaign against Trier

Luther's German New Testament published

Hadrian VI elected pope

Edict of the Diet of Niirnberg deferring action

On Civil Government

On the Order of Worship

Burning of the first martyrs of the Reformation

at Brussels
Death of Hutten
Clement VII elected pope
Hymnbook

To the Councilman . . . Christian Schools
Edict of the second diet of Niirnberg
Erasmus, On the Freedom of the Will

HERE I STAND

1525 January
March
April 19
May 5
May 5
May 15
May-June
June 13
July

before Christmas
December

1526 June 25-

August 27

1527 January
April

1528

1529

1530

summer

March 22
March 28
April 19
October 1-4
April 16
June 25

1531
1534
1536

1539

1543 January 4
July

1545 March 25

1546 February 18

Against the Heavenly Prophets

Twelve articles of the peasants

Admonition to Peace

Death of Frederick the Wise

Against the Robbing and Murdering Horde

Battle of Frankenhausen; capture of Miintzer

Crushing of the peasants

Luther's betrothal to Katherine von Bora

Open Letter Concerning the Hard Book Against
the Peasants

The German Mass

On the Enslaved Will

Diet of Speyer defers action on the Edict of
Worms

Exposition of Jonah

Whether Soldiers Too May Be Saved

Whether These Words: This Is My Body

Sickness, intense depression

Composition of "A Mighty Fortress"

Instruction -for the Visitors

Confession of the Lord's Supper

Protest at the Diet of Speyer

Marburg Colloquy; German catechism

Luther at the Coburg

Presentation of the Augsburg Confession

Exposition of the Eighty-Second Psalm

(Death penalty for sedition and blasphemy)

Warning to His Beloved Germans

Publication of the complete German Bible

Wittenberg Concord with the Swiss

Outbreak of Anabaptists at Miinster

Melanchthon's memorandum on the death pen-
alty for peaceful Anabaptists

Bigamy of the Landgrave Philip

Against the Jews

Publication of the Genesis Commentary (lec-
tures delivered from 1535-1545)

Against the Papacy at Rome Founded by the
Devil

Luther's death at Eisleben

CHAPTER ONE

THE Vow

N A SULTRY DAY in July of the year 1505 a-
lonely traveler was trudging over a parched
road on the outskirts of the Saxon village of
Stotternheim. He was a young man, short but
sturdy, and wore the dress of a university
student. As he approached the village, the
sky became overcast. Suddenly there was a
shower, then a crashing storm. A bolt of
iightning rived the gloom and knocked the man to the ground. Strug-
gling to rise, he cried in terror, "St. Anne help me! I will become a
monk."

The man who thus called upon a saint was later to repudiate the
cult of the saints. He who vowed to become a monk was later to
renounce monasticism. A loyal son of the Catholic Church, he
was later to shatter the structure of medieval Catholicism. A
devoted servant of the pope, he was later to identify the popes with
Antichrist. For this young man was Martin Luther.

His demolition was the more devastating because it reinforced
disintegrations already in progress. Nationalism was in process of
breaking the political unities when the Reformation destroyed the
religious. Yet this paradoxical figure revived the Christian conscious-
ness of Europe. In his day, as Catholic historians all agree, the popes
of the Renaissance were secularized, flippant, frivolous, sensual,
magnificent, and unscrupulous. The intelligentsia did not revolt
against the Church because the Church was so much of their mind
and mood as scarcely to warrant a revolt. Politics were emancipated

HERE I STAND

from any concern for the faith to such a degree that the Most
Christian King of France and His Holiness the Pope did not disdain
a military alliance with the Sultan against the Holy Roman Em-
peror. Luther changed all this. Religion became again a dominant
factor even in politics for another century and a half. Men cared
enough for the faith to die for it and to kill for it. If there is any
sense remaining of Christian civilization in the West, this man Luther
in no small measure deserves the credit.

Very naturally he is a controversial figure. The multitudinous
portrayals fall into certain broad types already delineated in his own
generation. His followers hailed him as the prophet of the Lord
and the deliverer of Germany. His opponents on the Catholic side
called him the son of perdition and the demolisher of Christendom.
The agrarian agitators branded him as the sycophant of the princes,
and the radical sectaries compared him to Moses, who led the chil-
dren of Israel out of Egypt and left them to perish in the
wilderness. But such judgments belong to an epilogue rather than
a prologue. The first endeavor must be to understand the man.

One will not move far in this direction unless one recognizes at
the outset that Luther was above all else a man of religion. The
great outward crises of his life which bedazzle the eyes of dramatic
biographers were to Luther himself trivial in comparison with the
inner upheavals of his questing after God. For that reason this
study may appropriately begin with his first acute religious crisis
in 1505 rather than with his birth in 1483. Childhood and youth
will be drawn upon only to explain the entry into the monastery.

AT HOME AND SCHOOL

The vow requires interpretation because even at this early point
in Luther's career judgments diverge. Those who deplore his sub-
sequent repudiation of the vow explain his defection on the ground
that he ought never to have taken it. Had he ever been a true
monk, he would not have abandoned the cowl. His critique of
monasticism is made to recoil upon himself in that he is painted as
a monk without vocation, and the vow is interpreted, not as a genuine

THE VOW

call, but rather as the resolution of an inner conflict, an escape from
maladjustment at home and at school.

A few sparse items of evidence are adduced in favor of this ex-
planation. They are not of the highest reliability because they are

all taken from the conversa-
tion of the older Luther as re-
corded, often inaccurately, by

Hit* Jj^Ji his students; and even if they are

genuine, they cannot be accepted
at face value because the Prot-
estant Luther was no longer in
a position to recall objectively
the motives of his Catholic period.
Really there is only one saying
which connects the taking of the
cowl with resentment against
parental discipline. Luther is re-
ported to have said, "My mother caned me
for stealing a nut, until the blood came.
Such strict discipline drove me to the mon-
astery, although she meant it well." This
saying is reinforced by two others: "My
father once whipped me so that I ran away
and felt ugly toward him until he was at
pains to win me back." "[At school] I was
caned in a single morning fifteen times for
nothing at all. I was required to decline
and conjugate and hadn't learned my les-

son."

Unquestionably the young were rough-
ly handled in those days, and Luther may be correctly reported as
having cited these instances in order to bespeak a more humane
treatment, but there is no indication that such severity produced more
than a flash of resentment. Luther was highly esteemed at home. His
parents looked to him as a lad of brilliant parts who should become a

HERE I STAND

jurist, make a prosperous marriage, and support them in their old age.
When Luther became a Master of Arts, his father presented him with a
copy of the Corpus Juris and addressed him no longer with the
familiar Du but with the polite Sie. Luther always exhibited an
extraordinary devotion to his father and was grievously disturbed
over parental disapproval of his entry into the monastery. When
his father died, Luther was too unnerved to work for several days.
The attachment to the mother appears to have been less marked;
but even of the thrashing he said that it was well intended, and he
recalled affectionately a little ditty she used to sing:

If folk don't like you and me,
The fault with us is like to be.

The schools also were not tender, but neither were they brutal.
The object was to impart a spoken knowledge of the Latin tongue.
The boys did not resent this because Latin was useful the language

THE ASINUS
24

THE VOW

of the Church, of law, diplomacy, international relations, scholar-
ship, and travel. The teaching was by drill punctuated with the rod.
One scholar, called a lupus or wolf, was appointed to spy on the
others and report lapses into German. The poorest scholar in the
class every noon was given a donkey mask, hence called the asinus,
which he wore until he caught another talking German. Demerits
were accumulated and accounted for by birching at the end of the
week. Thus one might have fifteen strokes on a single day.

But, despite all the severities, the boys did learn Latin and loved
it. Luther, far from being alienated, was devoted to his studies and
became highly proficient. The teachers were no brutes. One of
them, Trebonius, on entering the classroom always bared his head
in the presence of so many future burgomasters, chancellors, doc-
tors, and regents. Luther respected his teachers and was grieved
when they did not approve of his subsequent course.

Nor was he prevailingly depressed, but ordinarily rollicking, fond
of music, proficient on the lute, and enamored of the beauty of
the German landscape. How fair in retrospect was Erfurt! The
woods came down to the fringes of the village to be continued
by orchards and vineyards, and then the fields which supplied the
dye industry of Germany with plantings of indigo, blue-flowered
flax, and yellow saffron; and nestling within the brilliant rows lay
the walls, the gates, the steeples of many-spired Erfurt. Luther called
her a new Bethlehem.

RELIGIOUS DISQUIET

Yet Luther was at times severely depressed, and the reason lay
not in any personal frictions but in the malaise of existence inten-
sified by religion. This man was no son of the Italian Renaissance,
but a German born in remote Thuringia, where men of piety still
reared churches with arches and spires straining after the illimitable.
Luther was himself so much a gothic figure that his faith may be
called the last great flowering of the religion of the Middle Ages.
And he came from the most religiously conservative element of

HERE I STAND

the population, the peasants. His father, Hans Luther, and his
mother, Margaretta, were sturdy, stocky, swarthy German Bauern.
They were not indeed actually engaged in the tilling of the soil
because as a son without inheritance Hans had moved from the
farm to the mines. In the bowels of the earth he had prospered
with the help of St. Anne, the patroness of miners, until he had

HANS LUTHER

MARGARETTA LUTHER

come to be the owner of half a dozen foundries; yet he was not
unduly affluent, and his wife had still to go to the forest and drag
home the wood. The atmosphere of the family was that of the
peasantry: rugged, rough, at times coarse, credulous, and devout.
Old Hans prayed at the bedside of his son, and Margaretta was a
woman of prayer.

Certain elements even of old German paganism were blended
with Christian mythology in the beliefs of these untutored folk.
For them the woods and winds and water were peopled by elves,
gnomes, fairies, mermen and mermaids, sprites and witches. Sinister

THE VOW

spirits would release storms, floods, and pestilence, and would seduce
mankind to sin and melancholia. Luther's mother believed that they
played such minor pranks as stealing eggs, milk, and butter; and
Luther himself was never emancipated from such beliefs. "Many
regions are inhabited," said he, "by devils. Prussia is full of them,
and Lapland of witches. In my native country on the top of a
high mountain called the Pubelsberg is a lake into which if a stone
be thrown a tempest will arise over the whole region because the
waters are the abode of captive demons."

The education in the schools brought no emancipation but rather
reinforced the training of the home. In the elementary schools the
children were instructed in sacred song. They learned by heart
the Sanctus, the Benedictus, the Agnus Dei, and the Confiteor. They
were trained to sing psalms and hymns. How Luther loved the
Magnificat! They attended masses and vespers, and took part in the
colorful processions of the holy days. Each town in which Luther
went to school was full of churches and monasteries. Everywhere
it was the same: steeples, spires, cloisters, priests, monks of the
various orders, collections of relics, ringing of bells, proclaiming
of indulgences, religious processions, cures at shrines. Daily at Mans-
feld the sick were stationed beside a convent in the hope of cure
at the tolling of the vesper bell. Luther remembered seeing a devil
actually depart from one possessed.

The University of Erfurt brought no change. The institution at
that time had not yet been invaded by Renaissance influences. The
classics in the curriculum, such as Vergil, had always been favorites
in the Middle Ages. Aristotelian physics was regarded as an exercise
in thinking God's thoughts after him, and the natural explanations
of earthquakes and thunderstorms did not preclude occasional direct
divine causation. The studies all impinged on theology, and the
Master's degree for which Luther was preparing for the law could
have equipped him equally for the cloth. The entire training of
home, school, and university was designed to instill fear of God
and reverence for the Church.

HERE I STAND

In all this there is nothing whatever to set Luther off from his
contemporaries, let alone to explain why later on he should have
revolted against so much of medieval religion. There is just one
respect in whiph Luther appears to have been different from other
youths of his time, namely, in that he was extraordinarily sensitive
and subject to recurrent periods of exaltation and depression of
spirit. This oscillation of mood plagued him throughout his life.
He testified that it began in his youth and that the depressions had
been acute in the six months prior to his entry into the monastery.
One cannot dismiss these states as occasioned merely by adoles-
cence, since he was then twenty-one and similar experiences con-
tinued throughout his adult years. Neither can one blithely write
off the case as an example of manic depression, since the patient
exhibited a prodigious and continuous capacity for work of a high
order.

The explanation lies rather in the tensions which medieval religion
deliberately induced, playing alternately upon fear and hope. Hell
was stoked, not because men lived in perpetual dread, but precisely
because they did not, and in order to instill enough fear to drive
them to the sacraments of the Church. If they were petrified with
terror, purgatory was introduced by way of mitigation as an inter-
mediate place where those not bad enough for hell nor good enough
for heaven might make further expiation. If this alleviation inspired
complacency, the temperature was advanced on purgatory, and
then the pressure was again relaxed through indulgences.

Even more disconcerting than the fluctuation of the temperature
of the afterlife was the oscillation between wrath and mercy on
the part of the members of the divine hierarchy. God was portrayed
now as the Father, now as the wielder of the thunder. He might
be softened by the intercession of his kindlier Son, who again was
delineated as an implacable judge unless mollified by his mother,
who, being a woman, was not above cheating alike God and the
Devil on behalf of her suppliants; and if she were remote, one could
enlist her mother, St. Anne,

How these themes were presented is graphically illustrated in the

THE VOW

most popular handbooks in the very age of the Renaissance. The
theme was death; and the best sellers gave instructions, not on how
to pay the income tax, but on how to escape hell. Manuals entitled
On the Art of Dying depicted in lurid woodcuts the departing spirit
surrounded by fiends who
tempted him to commit the
irrevocable sin of abandoning
hope in God's mercy. To con-
vince him that he was al-
ready beyond pardon he was
confronted by the w T oman
with whom he had committed
adultery or the beggar he had
failed to feed. A companion
woodcut then gave encour-
agement by presenting the
figures of forgiven sinners:
Peter with his cock, Mary
Magdalene with her cruse, the
penitent thief, and Saul the
persecutor, with the conclud-
ing brief caption, "Never
despair."

If this conclusion minis-
tered to complacency, other presentations invoked dread.
A book strikingly illustrative of the prevailing mood is a
history of the world published by Hartmann Schedel in Niirn-
berg in 1493. The massive folios, after recounting the history of
mankind from Adam to the humanist Conrad Celtes, conclude
with a meditation on the brevity of human existence accompanied
by a woodcut of the dance of death. The final scene displays the
day of judgment. A full-page woodcut portrays Christ the Judge
sitting upon a rainbow. A lily extends from his right ear, signifying
the redeemed, who below are being ushered by angels into paradise.
From his left ear protrudes a sword, symbolizing the doom of the

FIENDS TEMPTING A DYING
MAN TO ABANDON HOPE

HERE I STAND

damned, whom the devils drag by the hair from the tombs and
cast into the flames of hell. How strange, comments a modern
editor, that a chronicle published in the year 1493 should end with
the judgment day instead of the discovery of America! Dr. Schedel
had finished his manuscript in June. Columbus had returned the
previous March. The news presumably had not yet reached Niirnberg.
By so narrow a margin Dr. Schedel missed this amazing scoop. "What
an extraordinary value surviving copies of the Chronicle would have
today if it had recorded the great event!"

So writes the modern editor. But old Dr. Schedel, had he known,
might not have considered the finding of a new world worthy of
record. He could scarcely have failed to know of the discovery of the
Cape of Good Hope in 1488. Yet he never mentioned it. The reason
is that he did not think of history as the record of humanity expand-
ing upon earth and craving as the highest good more earth in which
to expand. He thought of history as the sum of countless pilgrimages
through a vale of tears to the heavenly Jerusalem. Every one of
those now dead would some day rise and stand with the innumerable
host of the departed before the judgment seat to hear the words,
"Well done," or, "Depart from me into everlasting fire." The
Christ upon the rainbow with the lily and the sword was a most
familiar figure in the illustrated books of the period. Luther had
seen pictures such as these and testified that he was utterly terror-
stricken at the sight of Christ the Judge.

THE HAVEN OF THE COWL

Like everyone else in the Middle Ages he knew what to do. about
his plight. The Church taught that no sensible person would wait
until his deathbed to make an act of contrition and plead for grace.
From beginning to end the only secure course was to lay hold of
every help the Church had to offer: sacraments, pilgrimages, indul-
gences, the intercession of the saints. Yet foolish was the man who
relied solely on the good offices of the heavenly intercessors if
he had done nothing to insure their favor!

CHRIST THE JUDGE SITTING UPON THE RAINBOW

HERE I STAND

And what better could he do than take the cowl? Men belie\
the end of the world already had been postponed for the sake
the Cistercian monks. Christ had just "bidden the angel blow
trumpet for the Last Judgment, when the Mother of Mercy J
at the feet of her Son and besought Him to spare awhile, 'at k

ERFURT

for my friends of the Cistercian Order, that they may prep:
themselves.* " The very devils complained of St. Benedict as
robber who had stolen souls out of their hands. He who died in
cowl would receive preferential treatment in heaven because
his habit. Once a Cistercian in a high fever cast off his frock a
so died. Arriving at the gate of Paradise he was denied entry
St. Benedict because of the lack of uniform. He could only w
around the walls and peep in through the windows to see how
brethren fared, until one of them interceded for him, and
Benedict granted a reprieve to earth for the missing garment. .

THE VOW

this was of course popular piety. However much such crude notions
might be deprecated by reputable theologians, this was what the
common man believed, and Luther was a common man. Yet even
St. Thomas Aquinas himself declared the taking of the cowl to be
second baptism, restoring the sinner to the state of innocence which
he enjoyed when first baptized. The opinion was popular that if
the monk should sin thereafter, he was peculiarly privileged because
in his case repentance would bring restoration to the state of inno-
cence. Monasticism was the way par excellence to heaven.

Luther knew all this. Any lad with eyes in his head understood
what monasticisrn was all about. Living examples were to be seen
on the streets of Erfurt. Here were young Carthusians, mere lads,
already aged by their austerities. At Magdeburg, Luther looked
upon the emaciated Prince William of Anhalt, who had forsaken
the halls of the nobility to become a begging friar and walk the
streets carrying the sack of the mendicant. Like any other brother
he did the manual work of the cloister. "With my own eyes I saw
him," said Luther. "I was fourteen years old at Magdeburg. I saw
him carrying the sack like a donkey. He had so worn himself down
by fasting and vigil that he looked like a death's-head, mere bone
and skin. No one could look upon him without feeling ashamed
of his own life."

Luther knew perfectly well why youths should make themselves
old and nobles should make themselves abased. This life is only a
brief period of training for the life to come, where the saved will
enjoy an eternity of bliss and the damned will suffer everlasting
torment. With their eyes they will behold the despair which can
never experience the mercy of extinction. With their ears they will
hear the moans of the damned. They will inhale sulphurous fumes
and writhe in incandescent but unconsuming flame. All this will
last forever and forever and forever.

These were the ideas on which Luther had been nurtured. There
was nothing peculiar in his beliefs or his responses save their inten-
sity. His depression over the prospect of death was acute but by

HERE I STAND

no means singular. The man who was later to revolt against monas-
ticism became a monk for exactly the same reason as thousands
of others, namely, in order to save his soul. The immediate occasion
of his resolve to enter the cloister was the unexpected encounter
with death on that sultry July day in 1505. He was then twenty-one
and a student at the University of Erfurt. As he returned to school
after a visit with his parents, sudden lightning struck him to earth.
In that single flash he saw the denouement of the drama of exist-
ence. There was God the all-terrible, Christ the inexorable, and all
the leering fiends springing from their lurking places in pond and
wood that with sardonic cachinnations they might seize his shock
of curly hair and bolt him into hell. It was no wonder that he cried
out to his father's saint, patroness of miners, "St. Anne help me!
I will become a monk."

Luther himself repeatedly averred that he believed himself to
have been summoned by a call from heaven to which he could
not be disobedient. Whether or not he could have been absolved
from his vow, he conceived himself to be bound by it. Against
his own inclination, under divine constraint, he took the cowl.
Two weeks were required to arrange his affairs and to decide what
monastery to enter. He chose a strict one, the reformed congre-
gation of the Augustinians. After a farewell party with a few friends
he presented himself at the monastery gates. News was then sent
to his father, who was highly enraged. This was the son, educated
in stringency, who should have supported his parents in their old
age. The father was utterly unreconciled until he saw in the deaths
of two other sons a chastisement for his rebellion.

Luther presented himself as a novice. From no direct evidence
but from the liturgy of the Augustinians we are able to reconstruct
the scene of his reception. As the prior stood upon the steps
of the altar, the candidate prostrated himself. The prior asked,
"What seekest thou?" The answer came, "God's grace and thy
mercy." Then the prior raised him up and inquired whether he
was married, a bondsman, or afflicted with secret disease. The answer
being negative, the prior described the rigors of the life to be

THE VOW

undertaken: the renunciation of self-will, the scant diet, rough
clothing, vigils by night and labors by day, mortification of the
flesh, the reproach of poverty, the shame of begging, and the dis-
tastefulness of cloistered existence. Was he ready to take upon
himself these burdens? "Yes, with God's help," was the answer,
"and in so far as human frailty allows." Then he was admitted to
a year of probation. As the choir chanted, the head was tonsured.
Civilian clothes were exchanged for the habit of the novice. The
initiate bowed the knee. "Bless thou thy servant," intoned the prior.
"Hear, O Lord, our heartfelt pleas and deign to confer thy bless-
ing on this thy servant, w r hom in thy holy name we have clad in
the habit of a monk, that he may continue with thy help faithful
in thy Church and merit eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen." During the singing of the closing hymn Luther prostrated
himself with arms extended in the form of a cross. He was then
received into the convent by the brethren with the kiss of peace
and again admonished by the prior with the words, "Not he that
hath begun but he that endureth to the end shall be saved."

The meaning of Luther's entry into the monastery is simply this,
that the great revolt against the medieval Church arose from a

SIXTEENTH-CENTURY MONKS IN A CHOIR
35

HERE I STAND

desperate attempt to follow the way by her prescribed, Just as
Abraham overcame human sacrifice only through his willingness
to lift the sacrificial knife against Isaac, just as Paul was emanci-
pated from Jewish legalism only because as a Hebrew of the Hebrews
he had sought to fulfill all righteousness, so Luther rebelled out of
a more than ordinary devotion. To the monastery he went like
others, and even more than others, in order to make his peace with
God

CH APT ER TWO

THE CLOISTER

UTHER in later life remarked that during the
first year in the monastery the Devil is very
quiet. We have every reason to believe that
his own inner tempest subsided and that dur-
ing his novitiate he was relatively placid. This
may be inferred from the mere fact that at
the end of the year he was permitted to make
his profession. The probationary period was
intended to give the candidate an opportunity to test himself and to
be tested. He was instructed to search his heart and declare any mis-
givings as to his fitness for the monastic calling. If his companions
and superiors believed him to have no vocation, they would reject
him. Since Luther was accepted, we may safely assume that neither he
nor his brethren saw any reason to suppose that he was not adapted
to the monastic life.

His days as a novice were occupied with those religious exercises
designed to suffuse the soul with peace. Prayers came seven times
daily. After eight hours of sleep the monks were awakened between
one and two in the morning by the ringing of the cloister bell. At the
first summons they sprang up, made the sign of the cross, and pulled
on the white robe and the scapular without which the brother was
never to leave his cell. At the second bell each came reverently to the
church, sprinkled himself with holy water, and knelt before the high
altar with a prayer of devotion to the Saviour of the world. Then all
took their places in the choir. Matins lasted three quarters of an hour.
Each of the seven periods of the day ended with the chanting by the

HERE I STAND

cantor of the Salve Regina: "Save, O Queen, Thou Mother of mercy,
our life, our delight, and our hope. To Thee we exiled sons of Eve
lift up our cry. To Thee we sigh as we languish in this vale of tears.
Be Thou our advocate. Sweet Virgin Mary, pray for us, Thou holy
Mother of God." After the Ave Maria and the Pater Noster the
brothers in pairs silently filed out of the church.

With such exercises the day was filled. Brother Martin was sure
that he was walking in the path the saints had trod. The occasion
of his profession filled him with joy that the brothers had found him
worthy of continuing. At the foot of the prior he made his dedication
and heard the prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ, who didst deign to clothe
thyself in our mortality, we beseech thee out of thine immeasurable
goodness to bless the habit which the holy fathers have chosen as a
sign of innocence and renunciation. May this thy servant, Martin
Luther, who takes the habit, be clothed also in thine immortality,
O thou who livest and reignest with God the Father and the Holy
Ghost, God from eternity to eternity. Amen."

THE COURTYARD OF THE AUGUSTINIAN CLOISTER

THE CLOISTER

The solemn vow had been taken. He was a monk, as innocent as
a child newly baptized. Luther gave himself over with confidence
to the life which the Church regarded as the surest way of salvation.
He was content to spend his days in prayer, in song, in meditation
and quiet companionship, in disciplined and moderate austerity.

THE TERROR OF THE HOLY

Thus he might have continued had he not been overtaken by
another thunderstorm, this time of the spirit. The occasion was the
saying of his first mass. He had been selected for the priesthood by
his superior and commenced his functions with this initial celebration.

The occasion was always an ordeal because the mass is the focal
point of the Church's means of grace. Here on the altar bread and
wine become the flesh and blood of God, and the sacrifice of Calvary
is re-enacted. The priest \vho performs the miracle of transforming
the elements enjoys a power and privilege denied even to angels.
The \vhole difference between the clergy and the laity rests on this.
The superiority of the Church over the state likewise is rooted here,
for what king or emperor ever conferred upon mankind a boon
comparable to that bestowed by the humblest minister at the altar?

Well might the young priest tremble to perform a rite by which
God would appear in human form. But many had done it, and the
experience of the centuries enabled the manuals to foresee all possible
tremors and prescribe the safeguards. The celebrant must be con-
cerned, though not unduly, about the forms. The vestments must be
correct; the recitation must be correct, in a low voice and without
stammering. The state of the priest's soul must be correct. Before
approaching the altar he must have confessed and received absolution
for all his sins. He might easily worry lest he transgress any of these
conditions, and Luther testified that a mistake as to the vestments
was considered worse than the seven deadly sins. But the manuals
encouraged the trainee to regard no mistake as fatal because the
efficacy of the sacrament depends only on the right intention to per-
form it. Even should the priest recall during the celebration a deadly
sin unconfessed and unabsolved, he should not flee from the altar

HERE I STAND

but finish the rite, and absolution would be forthcoming afterward.
And if nervousness should so assail him that he could not continue,
an older priest would be at his side to carry on. No insuperable diffi-
culties faced the celebrant, and we have no reason to suppose that
Luther approached his first mass with uncommon dread. The post-

THE MASS

ponement of the date for a month was not due to any serious mis-
givings.

The reason was rather a very joyous one. He wanted his father
to be present, and the date was set to suit his convenience. The son
and the father had not seen each other since the university days when
old Hans presented Martin with a copy of the Roman law and
addressed him in the polite speech. The father had been vehemently
opposed to his entry into the monastery, but now he appeared to have
overcome all resentment and was willing, like other parents, to make

THE CLOISTER

a gala day of the occasion. With a company of twenty horsemen
Hans Luther came riding in and made a handsome contribution
to the monastery. The day began with the chiming of the cloister
bells and the chanting of the psalm, "O sing unto the Lord a new
song." Luther took his place before the altar and began to recite
the introductory portion of the mass until he came to the words,
"We offer unto thee, the living, the true, the eternal God." He related
afterward:

At these words I was utterly stupefied and terror-stricken. I thought to
myself, "With what tongue shall I address such Majesty, seeing that all
men ought to tremble in the presence of even an earthly prince? Who am
I, that I should lift up mine eyes or raise my hands to the divine Maj-
esty? The angels surround him* At his nod the earth trembles. And shall
I, a miserable little pygmy, say 'I want this, I ask for that'? For I am dust
and ashes and full of sin and I am speaking to the living, eternal and the
true God."

The terror of the Holy, the horror of Infinitude, smote him like a
new lightning bolt, and only through a fearful restraint could he hold
himself at the altar to the end.

The man of our secularized generation may have difficulty in
understanding the tremors of his medieval forebear. There are in-
deed elements in the religion of Luther of a very primitive character,
which hark back to the childhood of the race. He suffered from the
savage's fear of a malevolent deity, the enemy of men, capricious,
easily and unwittingly offended if sacred places be violated or
magical formulas mispronounced. His was the fear of ancient Israel
before the ark of the Lord's presence. Luther felt similarly toward the
sacred host of the Saviour's body; and when it was carried in proces-
sion, panic took hold of him. His God was the God who inhabited
the storm clouds brooding on the brow of Sinai, into whose presence
Moses could not enter with unveiled face and live. Luther's experi-
ence, however, far exceeds the primitive and should not be so unin-
telligible to the modern man who, gazing upon the uncharted nebulae

HERE I STAND

through instruments of his own devising, recoils with a sense of abject
littleness.

Luther's tremor was augmented by the recognition of unworthi-
ness. "I am dust and ashes and full of sin." Creatureliness and im-
perfection alike oppressed him. Toward God he was at once attracted
and repelled. Only in harmony with the Ultimate could he find peace.
But how could a pigmy stand before divine Majesty; how could a
transgressor confront divine Holiness? Before God the high and God
the holy Luther was stupefied. For such an experience he had a word
which has as much right to be carried over into English as Blitz-
krieg. The word he used was Anfechtung, for which there is no Eng-
lish equivalent. It may be a trial sent by God to test man, or an
assault by the Devil to destroy man. It is all the doubt, turmoil, pang,
tremor, panic, despair, desolation, and desperation which invade
the spirit of man.

Utterly limp, he came from the altar to the table where his father
and the guests would make merry with the brothers. After shudder-
ing at the unapproachableness of the heavenly Father he now craved
some word of assurance from the earthly father. How his heart would
be warmed to hear from the lips of old Hans that his resentment had
entirely passed, and that he was now cordially in accord with his
son's decision! They sat down to meat together, and Martin, as if
he were still a little child, turned and said, "Dear father, why were
you so contrary to my becoming a monk? And perhaps you are not
quite satisfied even now. The life is so quiet and godly."

This was too much for old Hans, who had been doing his best to
smother his rebellion. He flared up before all the doctors and the
masters and the guests, "You learned scholar, have you never read in
the Bible that you should honor your father and your mother? And
here you have left me and your dear mother to look after ourselves in
our old age."

Luther had not expected this. But he knew the answer. All the
manuals recalled the gospel injunction to forsake father and mother,
wife and child, and pointed out the greater benefits to be conferred
in the spiritual sphere. Luther answered, "But, father, I could do you

"AND WHEN I SAW HIM, I FELL AT His FEET AS DEAD"

HERE I STAND

more good by prayers than if I had stayed in the world." And then
he must have added what to him was the clinching argument, that
he had been called by a voice from heaven out of the thunder cloud.

"God grant/' said the old Hans, "it was not an apparition of the
Devil,"

There was the weak spot of all medieval religion. In this day of
skepticism we look back with nostalgia to the age of faith. How fair
it would have been to have lived in an atmosphere of naive assurance,
where heaven lay about the infancy of man, and doubt had not
arisen to torment the spirit! Such a picture of the Middle Ages is
sheer romanticism. The medieval man entertained no doubt of the
supernatural world, but that world itself was divided. There were
saints, and there were demons. There was God, and there was the
Devil, And the Devil could disguise himself as an angel of light.
Had Luther, then, been right to follow a vision which might after all
have been of the arch fiend, in preference to the plain clear word of
Scripture to honor father and mother? The day which began with the
ringing of the cloister chime and the psalm "O sing unto the Lord a
new song" ended with the horror of the Holy and doubt whether that
first thunderstorm had been a vision of God or an apparition of Satan.

THE WAY OF SELF-HELP

This second upheaval of the spirit set up in Luther an inner turmoil
which was to end in the abandonment of the cowl, but not until
after a long interval In fact he continued to wear the monastic habit
for three years after his excommunication. Altogether he was garbed
as a monk for nineteen years. His development was gradual, and we
are not to imagine him in perpetual torment and never able to say
mass without terror. He pulled himself together and went on with
the appointed round and with whatever new duties were assigned.
The prior, for example, informed him that he should resume his
university studies in order to qualify for the post of lector in the
Augustinian order. He took all such assignments in stride.

But the problem of the alienation of man from God had been re-
newed in altered form. Not merely in the hour of death but daily at

THE CLOISTER

the altar the priest stood in the presence of the All High and the All
Holy. How could man abide God's presence unless he were himself
holy? Luther set himself to the pursuit of holiness. Monasticism con-
stituted such a quest; and while Luther was in the world, he had
looked upon the cloister in any form as the higher righteousness. But
after becoming a monk he discovered levels within monasticism it-
self. Some monks were easygoing; some were strict. Those Carthusian
lads prematurely old; that prince of Anhalt, mere animated bones
these were not typical examples. They were the rigorists, heroic ath-
letes, seeking to take heaven by storm. Whether Luther's call to the
monastery had been prompted by God or the Devil, he was now a
monk, and a monk he would be to the uttermost. One of the privileges
of the monastic life was that it emancipated the sinner from all dis-
tractions and freed him to save his soul by practicing the counsels of
perfection not simply charity, sobriety, and love, but chastity, pover-
ty, obedience, fastings, vigils, and mortifications of the flesh. Whatever
good works a man might do to save himself, these Luther was re-
solved to perform.

He fasted, sometimes three days on end without a crumb. The
seasons of fasting were more consoling to him than those of feasting.
Lent was more comforting than Easter. He laid upon himself vigils
and prayers in excess of those stipulated by the rule. He cast off the
blankets permitted him and well-nigh froze himself to death. At
times he was proud of his sanctity and would say, "I have done noth-
ing wrong today." Then misgivings would arise. "Have you fasted
enough? Are you poor enough?" He would then strip himself of all
save that which decency required. He believed in later life that his
austerities had done permanent damage to his digestion.

I was a good monk, and I kept the rule of my order so strictly that I
may say that if ever a monk got to heaven by his monkery it was I. All
my brothers in the monastery who knew me will bear me out. If I had
kept on any longer, I should have killed myself with vigils, prayers, read-
ing, and other work.

HERE I STAND

All such drastic methods gave no sense of inner tranquillity. The
purpose of his striving was to compensate for his sins, but he could
never feel that the ledger was balanced. Some historians have there-
fore asserted that he must have been a very great sinner, and that
in all likelihood his sins had to do with sex, where
offenses are the least capable of any rectification.
But Luther himself declared that this was not a
particular problem. He had been chaste. While at
Erfurt he had never even heard a woman in con-
fession. And later at Wittenberg he had confessed
only three women, and these he had not seen.
Of course he was no wood carving, but sexual
temptation beset him no more than any other problem of the moral
life.

The trouble was that he could not satisfy God at any point. Com-
menting in later life on the Sermon on the Mount, Luther gave search-
ing expression to his disillusionment. Referring to the precepts of
Jesus he said:

This word is too high and too hard that anyone should fulfil it. This is
proved, not merely by our Lord's word, but by our own experience and
feeling. Take any upright man or woman. He will get along very nicely
with those who do not provoke him, but let someone proffer only the
slightest irritation and he will flare up in anger, ... if not against friends,
then against enemies. Flesh and blood cannot rise above it.

Luther simply had not the capacity to fulfill the conditions.

THE MERITS OF THE SAINTS

But if he could not, others might. The Church, while taking an in-
dividualistic view of sin, takes a corporate view of goodness. Sins
must be accounted for one by one, but goodness can be pooled; and
there is something to pool because the saints, the Blessed Virgin, and
the Son of God were better than they needed to be for their own sal-
vation. Christ in particular, being both sinless and God, is possessed
of an unbounded store. These superfluous merits of the righteous

THE CLOISTER

constitute a treasury which is transferable to those whose accounts are
in arrears. The transfer is effected through the Church and, particular-
ly, through the pope, to whom as the successor of St. Peter have
been committed the keys to bind and loose. Such a transfer of credit
was called an indulgence.

Precisely how much good it would do had not been definitely de-
fined, but the common folk were disposed to believe the most ex-
travagant claims. No one questioned that the pope could draw on
the treasury in order to remit penalties for sin imposed by himself
on earth. In fact one would suppose that he could do this by mere
fiat without any transfer. The important question was whether or
not he could mitigate the pangs of purgatory. During the decade
in which Luther was born a pope had declared that the efficacy of
indulgences extended to purgatory for the benefit of the living and
the dead alike. In the case of the living there was no assurance of
avoiding purgatory entirely because God alone knew the extent of
the unexpiated guilt and the consequent length of the sentence, but
the Church could tell to the year and the day by how much the
term could be reduced, whatever it was. And in the case of those al-
ready dead and in purgatory, the sum of whose wickedness was
complete and known, an immediate release could be offered. Some
bulls of indulgence went still further and applied not merely to re-
duction of penalty but even to the forgiveness of sins. They offered
a plenary remission and reconciliation with the Most High.

There were places in which these signal
mercies were more accessible than in others. For
no theological reason but in the interest of ad-
vertising, the Church associated the dispensing of
the merits of the saints with visitation upon the
relics of the saints. Popes frequently speci-
fied precisely how much benefit could
be derived from viewing each holy bone.
Every relic of the saints in Halle, for example, was endowed by
Pope Leo X with an indulgence for the reduction of purgatory by
four thousand years. The greatest storehouse for such treasures was

HERE I STAND

Rome. Here in the single crypt of St. Callistus forty popes were
buried and 76,000 martyrs. Rome had a piece of Moses' burning bush
and three hundred particles of the Holy Innocents. Rome had the
portrait of Christ on the napkin of St. Veronica. Rome had the chains
of St. Paul and the scissors with which Emperor Domitian clipped
the hair of St. John. The walls of Rome near the Appian gate showed
the white spots left by the stones which turned to snowballs when
hurled by the mob against St. Peter before his time was come. A
church in Rome had the crucifix which leaned over to talk to St.
Brigitta. Another had a coin paid to Judas for betraying our Lord.
Its value had greatly increased, for now it was able to confer an in-
dulgence of fourteen hundred years. The amount of indulgences to
be obtained between the Lateran and St. Peter's was greater than
that afforded by a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Still another church
in Rome possessed the twelve-foot beam on which Judas hanged
himself. This, however, was not strictly a relic, and doubt was per-
mitted as to its authenticity. In front of the Lateran were the Scala
Smcta, twenty-eight stairs, supposedly those which once stood in
front of Pilate's palace. He who crawled up them on hands and knees,
repeating a Pater Noster for each one, could thereby release a soul
from purgatory. Above all, Rome had the entire
bodies of St. Peter and St. Paul. They had been
divided to distribute the benefits among the
churches. The heads were in the Lateran, and
one half of the body of each had been deposited
in their respective churches. No city on earth
was so plentifully supplied with holy relics, and
no city on earth was so richly endowed with
spiritual indulgences as Holy Rome.

THE TRIP TO ROME

Luther felt himself to be highly privileged when an opportunity
presented itself to make a trip to the Eternal City. A dispute had
arisen in the Augustinian order calling for settlement by the pope. Two
brothers were sent to the holy city to represent the chapter at Erfurt.

THE CLOISTER

One of the brothers was Martin Luther. This was in the year 1510.
The trip to Rome is very revealing of the character of Martin Lu-
ther. What he saw, and what he did not care to see, throw light upon
him. He was not interested in the art of the Renaissance. Of course, the
great treasures were not yet visible. The piers of the new basilica of
St. Peter's had only just been laid, and the Sistine
Chapel was not yet completed. But the frescoes
of Pinturicchio were in view and might have
awakened his admiration had he not been more
interested in a painting of the Virgin Mary at-
tributed to Luke the Evangelist than in all the
Madonnas of the Renaissance. Again, the ruins
of antiquity evoked no enthusiasm but served
only to point the moral that the city founded on fratricide and
stained with the blood of martyrs had been overthrown by divine
justice like the Tower of Babel.

Neither the Rome of the Renaissance nor the Rome of antiquity
interested Luther so much as the Rome of the saints. The business of
the order would not be too time-consuming to prevent taking ad-
vantage of the unusual opportunities to save his soul. Luther's mood
was that of a pilgrim who at the first sight of the Eternal City crie3,
"Hail, holy Rome!" He would seek to appropriate for himself and
his relatives all the enormous spiritual benefits available only there.
He had but a month in which to do it. The time was strenuously
spent. He must of course perform the daily devotions of the Au-
gustinian cloister in which he was lodged, but there remained suf-
ficient hours to enable him to say the general confession, to celebrate
mass at sacred shrines, to visit the catacombs and the basilicas, to
venerate the bones, the shrines, and every holy relic.

Disillusionments of various sorts set in at once. Some of them were
irrelevant to his immediate problem but were concomitants in his
total distress. On making his general confession he was dismayed by
the incompetence of the confessor. The abysmal ignorance, frivolity,
and levity of the Italian priests stupefied him. They could rattle
through six or seven masses while he was saying one. And when he

HERE I STAND

was only at the Gospel, they had finished and would say to him,
"Passa! Passa!" "Get a move on!" The same sort of thing Luther
could have discovered in Germany if he had emerged from the cloister
to visit mass priests, whose assignment it was to repeat a specified
number of masses a day, not for communicants but in behalf of the
dead. Such a practice lent itself to irreverence. Some of the Italian
clergy, however, were flippantly unbelieving and would address the
sacrament saying, "Bread art thou and bread thou wilt remain, and
wine art thou and wine thou wilt remain." To a devout believer from
the unsophisticated Northland such disclosures were truly shocking.
They need not have made him despondent in regard to the validity
of his own quest because the Church had long taught that the efficacy
of the sacraments did not depend on the character of the ministrants.

By a like token the stories that came to Luther's ears of the im-
morality of the Roman clergy should not logically have undermined
his faith in the capacity of Holy Rome to confer spiritual benefits.
At the same time he was horrified to hear that if there were a hell
Rome was built upon it. He need not have been a scandalmonger to
know that the district of ill fame was frequented by ecclesiastics. He
heard there were those who considered themselves virtuous because
they confined themselves to women. The unsavory memory of Pope
Alexander VI was still a stench. Catholic historians recognize candid-
ly the scandal of the Renaissance popes, and the Catholic Reforma-
tion was as greatly concerned as the Protestant to eradicate such
abuses.

Yet all these sorry disclosures did not shatter Luther's confidence
in the genuine goodness of the faithful. The question was whether
they had any superfluous merit which could be conveyed to him or
to his family, and whether the merit was so attached to sacred places
that visits would confer benefit. This was the point at which doubt
overtook him. He was climbing Pilate's stairs on hands and knees
repeating a Pater Noster for each one and kissing each step for good
measure in the hope of delivering a soul from purgatory. Luther re-
gretted that his own father and mother were not yet dead and in pur-
gatory so that he might confer on them so signal a favor. Failing

THE CLOISTER

that, he had resolved to release Grandpa Heine. The stairs were
climbed, the Pater N osiers were repeated, the steps were kissed. At
the top Luther raised himself and exclaimed, not as legend would
have it, "The just shall live by faith! "he was not yet that far ad-
vanced. What he said was, "Who knows whether it is so?"

That was the truly disconcerting doubt. The priests might be guilty
of levity and the popes of lechery all this would not matter so long
as the Church had valid means of grace. But if crawling up the very
stairs on which Christ stood and repeating all the prescribed prayers
would be of no avail, then another of the great grounds of hope had
proved to be illusory. Luther commented that he had gone to Rome
with onions and had returned with garlic.

CHAPTER THREE

THE GOSPEL

ETXJRNING from Rome, Luther came under
new influences due to a change of residence.
He was transferred from Erfurt to Witten-
berg, where he was to pass the remainder of
his days. In comparison with Erfurt, Witten-
berg was but a village with a population of
only 2,000 to 2,500. The whole length of the
town was only nine tenths of a mile. Contem-
poraries variously described it as "the gem of Thuringia" and "a stink-
ing sand dune." It was built on a sand belt and for that reason was
called the White Hillock, Witten-Berg. Luther never rhapsodized
over the place, and he addressed to it this ditty:

Little land, little land,
You are but a heap of sand.
If I dig you, the soil is light;
If I reap you, the yield is slight.

But as a matter of fact it was not unproductive. Grain, vegetables,
and fruit abounded, and the near-by woods provided game. The
river Elbe flowed on one side, and a moat surrounded the town on
the other. Two brooks were introduced by wooden aqueducts
through the walls on the upper side and flowed without a cover-
ing down the two main streets of the town until they united at the
mill. Open sluggish water was at once convenient and offensive.
Luther lived in the Augustinian cloister at the opposite end from the
Castle Church.

. 52

THE GOSPEL

The chief glory of the village was the university, the darling of
the elector, Frederick the Wise, who sought in this newly founded
academy to rival the prestige of the century-old University of Leip-
zig. The new foundation had not flourished according to hope, and
the elector endeavored to secure better teachers by inviting the
Augustinians and Franciscans to supply three new professors. One
of them was Luther. This was in 15 11,

By reason of the move he came to know well a man who was to
exercise a determinative influence upon his development, the vicar
of the Augustinian order, Johann von Staupitz. No one better could
have been found as a spiritual guide. The vicar knew all the cures
prescribed by the schoolmen for spiritual ailments, and besides had
a warm religious life of his own with a sympathetic appreciation of
the distresses of another. "If it had not been for Dr. Staupitz," said
Luther, "I should have sunk in hell."

Luther's difficulties persisted. A precise delineation of their course
eludes us. His tremors cannot be said to have mounted in unbroken
crescendo to a single crisis. Rather he passed through a series of crises

Jj&flaeaox^w^^

WITTENBERG IN 1627
S3

HERE I STAND

to a relative stability. The stages defy localization as to time, place, or
logical sequence. Yet this is clear. Luther probed every resource of
contemporary Catholicism for assuaging the anguish of a spirit alien-
ated from God. He tried the way of good works and discovered that
he could never do enough to save himself. He endeavored to avail
himself of the merits of the saints and ended with a doubt, not a very
serious or persistent doubt for the moment, but sufficient to destroy his
assurance.

THE FAILURE OF CONFESSION

He sought at the same time to explore other ways, and Catholicism
had much more to offer. Salvation was never made to rest solely nor
even primarily upon human achievement. The whole sacramental sys-
tem of the Church was designed to mediate to man God's help and
favor. Particularly the sacrament of penance afforded solace, not to
saints but to sinners. This only was required of them, that they should
confess all their wrongdoing and seek absolution. Luther endeavored
unremittingly to avail himself of this signal mercy. Without confes-
sion, he testified, the Devil would have devoured him long ago. He
confessed frequently, often daily, and for as long as six hours on a
single occasion. Every sin in order to be absolved was to be confessed.
Therefore the soul must be searched and the memory ransacked and
the motives probed. As an aid the penitent ran through the seven
deadly sins and the Ten Commandments. Luther would repeat a con-
fession and, to be sure of including everything, would review his en-
tire life until the confessor grew weary and exclaimed, "Man, God
is not angry with you. You are angry with God. Don't you know that
God commands you to hope?"

This assiduous confessing certainly succeeded in clearing up any
major transgressions. The leftovers with which Luther kept trotting
in appeared to Staupitz to be only the scruples of a sick soul. "Look
here," said he, "if you expect Christ to forgive you, come in with
something to forgiveparricide, blasphemy, adultery instead of all
these peccadilloes."

THE GOSPEL

But Luther's question was not whether his sins were big or little,
but whether they had been confessed. The great difficulty which he
encountered was to be sure that everything had been recalled. He
learned from experience the cleverness of memory in protecting the
ego, and he was frightened when after six hours of confessing he could
still go out and think of something else which had eluded his most
conscientious scrutiny. Still more disconcerting was the discovery
that some of man's misdemeanors are not even recognized, let alone
remembered. Sinners often sin without compunction. Adam and Eve,
after tasting of the fruit of the forbidden tree, went blithely for a
walk in the cool of the day; and Jonah, after fleeing from the Lord's
commission, slept soundly in the hold of the ship. Only when each
was confronted by an accuser was there any consciousness of guilt.
Frequently, too, when man is reproached he will still justify himself
like Adam, who replied, "The woman whom thou gavest to be with
me" as if to say to God, "She tempted me; you gave her to me; you
are to blame."

There is, according to Luther, something much more drastically
wrong with man than any particular list of offenses which can be
enumerated, confessed, and forgiven. The very nature of man is
corrupt. The penitential system fails because it is directed to particular
lapses. Luther had come to perceive that the entire man is in need of
forgiveness. In the course of this quest he had wrought himself into
a state of emotional disturbance passing the bounds of objectivity.
When, then, his confessor said that he was magnifying his misde-
meanors, Luther could only conclude that the consultant did not un-
derstand the case and that none of the proffered consolations was of
any avail.

In consequence the most frightful insecurities beset him. Panic in-
vaded his spirit. The conscience became so disquieted as to start and
tremble at the stirring of a wind-blown leaf. The horror of night-
mare gripped the soul, the dread of one waking in the dusk to look
into the eyes of him who has come to take his life. The heavenly
champions all withdrew; the fiend beckoned with leering summons to
the impotent soul. These were the torments which Luther repeatedly

HERE I STAND

testified were far worse than any physical ailment that he had ever
endured*

His description tallies so well with a recognized type of mental
malady that again one is tempted to wonder whether his disturbance
should be regarded as arising from authentic religious difficulties or
from gastric or glandular deficiencies. The question can better be
faced when more data become available from other periods of his
life. Suffice it for the moment to observe that no malady ever impaired
his stupendous capacity for work; that the problems with which he
wrestled were not imaginary but implicit in the religion on which he
had been reared; that his emotional reactions were excessive, as he
would himself recognize after emerging from a depression; that he
did make headway in exhausting one by one the helps proffered by
medieval religion.

He had arrived at a valid impasse. Sins to be forgiven must be con-
fessed. To be confessed they must be recognized and remembered.
If they are not recognized and remembered, they cannot be confessed.
If they are not confessed, they cannot be forgiven. The only way
out is to deny the premise. But that Luther was not yet ready to do.
Staupitz at this point offered real help by seeking to divert his atten-
tion from individual sins to the nature of man. Luther later on formu-
lated what he had learned by saying that the physician does not need
to probe each pustule to know that the patient has smallpox, nor is
the disease to be cured scab by scab. To focus on particular offenses
is a counsel of despair. When Peter started to count the waves, he
sank. The whole nature of man needs to be changed.

THE MYSTIC LADDER

This was the insight of the mystics. Staupitz was a mystic. Although
the mystics did not reject the penitential system, their way of salva-
tion was essentially different, directed to man as a whole. Since man
is weak, let him cease to strive; let him surrender himself to the being
and the love of God.

The new life, they said, calls for a period of preparation which
consists in overcoming all the assertiveness of the ego, all arrogance,

THE GOSPEL

pride, self-seeking, everything connected with the I, the me, and
the my. Luther's very effort to achieve merit was a form of assertive-
ness. Instead of striving he must yield and sink himself in God. The
end of the mystic way is the absorption of the creature in the creator,
of the drop in the ocean, of the candle flame in the glare of the sun.
The straggler overcomes his restlessness, ceases his battering, surren-
ders himself to the Everlasting, and in the abyss of Being finds his
peace.

Luther tried this way. At times he was lifted up as if he were amid
choirs of angels, but the sense of alienation would return. The mystics
knew this too. They called it the dark night of the soul, the dryness,
the withdrawing of the fire from under the pot until it no longer
bubbles. They counseled waiting until exaltation would return. For
Luther it did not return because the enmity between man and God
is too great. For all his impotence, man is a rebel against his Maker.

The acuteness of Luther's distress arose from his sensitivity at once
to all the difficulties by which man has ever been beset. Could he have
taken them one at a time, each might the more readily have been
assuaged. For those who are troubled by particular sins the Church
offers forgiveness through the penitential system, but pardon is made
contingent upon conditions which Luther found unattainable. For
those too weak to meet the tests there is the mystic way of ceasing to
strive and of losing oneself in the abyss of the Godhead. But Luther
could not envisage God as an abyss hospitable to man the impure.
God is holy, majestic, devastating, consuming.

Do you not know that God dwells in light inaccessible? We weak and
ignorant creatures want to probe and understand the incomprehensible
majesty of the unfathomable light of the wonder of God. We approach;
we prepare ourselves to approach. What wonder then that his majesty
overpowers us and shatters!

So acute had Luther's distress become that even the simplest helps
of religion failed to bring him heartsease. Not even prayer could
quiet his tremors; for when he was on his knees, the Tempter would
come and say, "Dear fellow, what are you praying for? Just see how

HERE I STAND

quiet it is about you here. Do you think that God hears your prayer
and pays any attention?"

Staupitz tried to bring Luther to see that he was making religion
altogether too difficult. There is just one thing needful, and that is to
love God. This was another favorite counsel of the mystics, but the
intended word of comfort pierced like an arrow. How could anyone
love a God who is a consuming fire? The psalm says, "Serve the Lord
with fear." Who, then, can love a God angry, judging, and damning?
Who can love a Christ sitting on a rainbow, consigning the damned
souls to the flames of hell? The mere sight of a crucifix was to Luther
like a stroke of lightning. He would flee, then, from the angry Son
to the merciful Mother. He would appeal to the saints twenty-one
of them he had selected as his especial patrons, three for each day of
the week. All to no avail, for of what use is any intercession if God
remains angry?

The final and the most devastating doubt of all assailed the young
man. Perhaps not even God himself is just. This misgiving arose in
two forms, depending on the view of God's character and behavior.
Basic to both is the view that God is too absolute to be conditioned by
considerations of human justice. The late scholastics, among whom
Luther had been trained, thought that God is so unconditioned that
he is bound by no rules save those of his own making. He is under
no obligation to confer reward on man's achievements, no matter how
meritorious. Normally God may be expected to do so, but there is no
positive certitude. For Luther this meant that God is capricious and
man's fate is unpredictable. The second view was more disconcerting
because it held that man's destiny is already determined, perhaps
adversely. God is so absolute that nothing can be contingent. Man's
fate has been decreed since the foundation of the world, and in large
measure also man's character is already fixed. This view commended
itself all the more to Luther because it had been espoused by the
founder of his order, St. Augustine, who, following Paul, held that
God has already chosen some vessels for honor and some for dishonor,
regardless of their deserts. The lost are lost, do what they can; the saved
are saved, do what they may. To those who think they are saved this

THE GOSPEL

is an unspeakable comfort, but to those who think they are damned
it is a hideous torment.
Luther exclaimed:

Is it not against all natural reason that God out of his mere whim deserts
men, hardens them, damns them, as if he delighted in sins and in such
torments of the wretched for eternity, he who is said to be of such mercy
and goodness? This appears iniquitous, cruel, and intolerable in God, by
which very many have been offended in all ages. And who would not be?
I was myself more than once driven to the very abyss of despair so that
I wished I had never been created. Love God? I hated him!

The word of blasphemy had been spoken. And blasphemy is the
supreme sin because it is an offense against the most exalted of all be-
ings, God the majestic. Luther reported to Staupitz, and his answer
was, "Ich verstehe es nicht!"~"l don't understand it!" Was, then,
Luther the only one in all the world who had been so plagued? Had
Staupitz himself never experienced such trials? "No," said he, "but
I think they are your meat and drink." Evidently he suspected Luther
of thriving on his disturbances. The only word of reassurance he could
give was a reminder that the blood of Christ was shed for the remis-
sion of sins. But Luther was too obsessed with the picture of Christ
the avenger to be consoled with the thought of Christ the redeemer.

Staupitz then cast about for some effective cure for this tormented
spirit. He recognized in him a man of moral earnestness, religious sen-
sitivity, and unusual gifts. Why his difficulties should be so enormous
and so persistent was baffling. Plainly argument and consolation did
no good. Some other way must be found. One day under the pear tree
in the garden of the Augustinian cloister Luther always treasured
that pear tree the vicar informed Brother Martin that he should study
for his doctor's degree, that he should undertake preaching and as-
sume the chair of Bible at the university. Luther gasped, stammered
out fifteen reasons why he could do nothing of the sort. The sum of it
all was that so much work would kill him. "Quite all right," said
Staupitz. "God has plenty of work for clever men to do in heaven."

Luther might well gasp, for the proposal of Staupitz was audacious

HERE 1 STAND

if not reckless. A young man on the verge of a nervous collapse over
religious problems was to be commissioned as a teacher, preacher, and
counselor to sick souls. Staupitz was practically saying, "Physician,
cure thyself by curing others." He must have felt that Luther was
fundamentally sound and that if he was entrusted with the cure of
souls he would be disposed for their sakes to turn from threats to
promises, and some of the grace which he would claim for them might
fall also to himself.

Staupitz knew likewise that Luther would be helped by the subject
matter of his teaching. The chair designed for him was the one which
Staupitz himself had occupied, the chair of Bible. One is tempted
to surmise that he retired in order unobtrusively to drive this agoniz-
ing brother to wrestle with the source book of his religion. One may
wonder why Luther had not thought of this himself. The reason is
not that the Bible was inaccessible, but that Luther was following a
prescribed course and the Bible was not the staple of theological edu-
cation.

Yet anyone who seeks to discover the secret of Christianity is in-
evitably driven to the Bible, because Christianity is based on something
which happened in the past, the incarnation of God in Christ at a
definite point in history. The Bible records this event.

THE EVANGELICAL EXPERIENCE

Luther set himself to learn and expound the Scriptures. On August
1, 1513, he commenced his lectures on the book of Psalms. In the fall
of 1515 he was lecturing on St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans. The
Epistle to the Galatians was treated throughout 1516-17. These
studies proved to be for Luther the Damascus road. The third great
religious crisis which resolved his turmoil was as the still small voice
compared to the earthquake of the first upheaval in the thunderstorm
at Stotternheim and the fire of the second tremor which consumed
him at the saying of his first mass. No coup de -foudre, no heavenly ap-
parition, no religious ceremony, precipitated the third crisis. The
place was no lonely road in a blinding storm, nor even the holy altar,
but simply the study in the tower of the Augustinian monastery. The

LUTHER'S BEBLE

HERE I STAND

solution to Luther's problems came in the midst of the performance
of the daily task.

His first lectures were on the book of Psalms. We must bear in
mind his method of reading the Psalms and the Old Testament as a
whole. For him, as for his time, it was a Christian book foreshadowing
the life and death of the Redeemer.

The reference to Christ was unmistakable when he came to the
twenty-second psalm, the first verse of which was recited by Christ
as he expired upon the cross. "My God, my God, why hast thou for-
saken me?" What could be the meaning of this? Christ evidently felt
himself to be forsaken, abandoned by God, deserted. Christ too had
Anfechtungen. The utter desolation which Luther said he could not
endure for more than a tenth of an hour and live had been experienced
by Christ himself as he died. Rejected of men, he was rejected also of
God. How much worse this must have been than the scourging, the
thorns, the nails! In the garden he sweat blood as he did not upon the
cross. Christ's descent into hell was nothing other than this sense of
alienation from God. Christ had suffered what Luther suffered, or
rather Luther was finding himself in what Christ had suffered, even
as Albrecht Diirer painted himself as the Man of Sorrows.

Why should Christ have known such desperations? Luther knew
perfectly well why he himself had had them: he was weak in the
presence of the Mighty; he was impure in the presence of the Holy;
he had blasphemed the Divine Majesty. But Christ was not weak;
Christ was not impure; Christ was not impious. Why then should he
have been so overwhelmed with desolation? The only answer must
be that Christ took to himself the iniquity of us all. He who was with-
out sin for our sakes became sin and so identified himself with us as
to participate in our alienation. He who was truly man so sensed his
solidarity with humanity as to feel himself along with mankind es-
tranged from the All Holy. What a new picture this is of Christ!
Where, then, is the judge, sitting upon the rainbow to condemn sin-
ners? He is still the judge. He must judge, as truth judges error and
light darkness; but in judging he suffers with those whom he must

THE GOSPEL

condemn and feels himself with them subject to condemnation. The
judge upon the rainbow has become the derelict upon the cross.

A new view also of God is here. The All Terrible is the All Merci-
ful too. Wrath and love fuse upon the cross. The hideousness of sin
cannot be denied or forgotten; but God, who desires not that a sinner
should die but that he should turn and live, has found the reconcilia-
tion in the pangs of bitter death. It is not that the Son by his sacrifice
has placated the irate Father; it is not primarily that the Master by his
self-abandoning goodness has made up for our deficiency. It is that
in some inexplicable way, in the utter desolation of the forsaken
Christ, God was able to reconcile the world to himself. This does not
mean that all the mystery is clear. God is still shrouded at times in
thick darkness. There are almost two Gods, the inscrutable God whose
ways are past finding out and the God made known to us in Christ.
He is still a consuming fire, but he burns that he may purge and
chasten and heal. He is not a God of idle whim, because the cross is
not the last word. He who gave his Son unto death also raised him up
and will raise us with him, if with him we die to sin that we may rise
to newness of life.

Who can understand this? Philosophy is unequal to it. Only faith
can grasp so high a mystery. This is the foolishness of the cross which
is hid from the wise and prudent. Reason must retire. She cannot
understand that "God hides his power in weakness, his wisdom in
folly, his goodness in severity, his justice in sins, his mercy in anger."

How amazing that God in Christ should do all this; that the Most
High, the Most Holy should be the All Loving too; that the ineffable
Majesty should stoop to take upon himself our flesh, subject to hun-
ger and cold, death and desperation. We see him lying in the feed-
box of a donkey, laboring in a carpenter's shop, dying a derelict under
the sins of the world. The gospel is not so much a miracle as a marvel,
and every line is suffused with wonder.

What God first worked in Christ, that he must work also in us.
If he who had done no wrong was forsaken on the cross, we who are
truly alienated from God must suffer a deep hurt. We are not for that
reason to upbraid, since the hurt is for our healing.

HERE I STAND

Repentance which is occupied with thoughts of peace is hypocrisy.
There must be a great earnestness about it and a deep hurt if the old
man is to be put off. When lightning strikes a tree or a man, it does two
things at onceit rends the tree and swiftly slays the man. But it also
turns the face of the dead man and the broken branches of the tree itself
toward heaven. . . . We seek to be saved, and God in order that he may
save rather damns. . . . They are damned who flee damnation, for Christ
was of all the saints the most damned and forsaken.

The contemplation of the cross had convinced Luther that God is
neither malicious nor capricious. If, like the Samaritan, God must
first pour into our wounds the wine that smarts, it is that he may
thereafter use the oil that soothes. But there still remains the problem
of the justice of God. Wrath can melt into mercy, and God will be all
the more the Christian God; but if justice be dissolved in leniency, how
can he be the just God whom Scripture describes? The study of the
apostle Paul proved at this point of inestimable value to Luther and
at the same time confronted him with the final stumbling block be-
cause Paul unequivocally speaks of the justice of God. At the very
expression Luther trembled. Yet he persisted in grappling with Paul,
who plainly had agonized over precisely his problem and had found
a solution. Light broke at last through the examination of exact shades
of meaning in the Greek language. One understands why Luther could
never join those who discarded the humanist tools of scholarship. In
the Greek of the Pauline epistles the word "justice" has a double
sense, rendered in English by "justice" and "justification." The former
is a strict enforcement of the law, as when a judge pronounces the
appropriate sentence. Justification is a process of the sort which some-
times takes place if the judge suspends the sentence, places the prisoner
on parole, expresses confidence and personal interest in him, and there-
by instills such resolve that the man is reclaimed and justice itself ulti-
mately better conserved than by the exaction of a pound of flesh.
Similarly the moral improvement issuing from the Christian experience
of regeneration, even though it falls far short of perfection, yet can
be regarded as a vindication of the justice of God.

But from here on any human analogy breaks down. God does not

THE GOSPEL

condition his forgiveness upon the expectation of future fulfillment.
And man is not put right with God by any achievement, whether
present or foreseen. On man's side the one requisite is faith, which
means belief that God was in Christ seeking to save; trust that God
will keep his promises; and commitment to his will and way. Faith is
not an achievement. It is a gift. Yet it comes only through the hearing
and study of the Word. In this respect Luther's own experience was
made normative. For the whole process of being made new Luther
took over from Paul the terminology of "justification by faith."
These are Luther's own words:

I greatly longed to understand Paul's Epistle to the Romans and
nothing stood in the way but that one expression, "the justice of God,"
because I took it to mean that justice whereby God is just and deals justly
in punishing the unjust. My situation was that, although an impeccable
monk, I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience, and I had no
confidence that my merit would assuage him. Therefore I did not love
a just and angry God, but rather hated and murmured against him. Yet I
clung to the dear Paul and had a great yearning to know what he meant.

Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the
justice of God and the statement that "the just shall live by his faith."
Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which
through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith. Thereupon
I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into
paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas
before the "justice of God" had filled me with hate, now it became to
me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul became to
me a gate to heaven. . . .

If you have a true faith that Christ is your Saviour, then at once you
have a gracious God, for faith leads you in and opens up God's heart
and will, that you should see pure grace and overflowing love. This it is to
behold God in faith that you should look upon his fatherly, friendly
heart, in which there is no anger nor ungraciousness. He who sees God
as angry does not see him rightly but looks only on a curtain, as if a
dark cloud had been drawn across his face.

Luther had come into a new view of Christ and a new view of God.
He had come to love the suff ering Redeemer and the God unveiled
on Calvary. But were they after all powerful enough to deliver him

HERE I STAND

from all the hosts of hell? The cross had resolved the conflict between
the wrath and the mercy of God, and Paul had reconciled for him
the inconsistency of the justice and the forgiveness of God, but what
of the conflict between God and the Devil? Is God lord of all, or is he
himself impeded by demonic hordes? Such questions a few years ago
would have seemed to modern man but relics of medievalism, and
fear of demons was dispelled simply by denying their existence. To-
day so much of the sinister has engulfed us that we are prone to won-
der whether perhaps there may not be malignant forces in the heavenly
places. All those who have known the torments of mental disorder
well understand the imagery of satanic hands clutching to pull them
to their doom. Luther's answer was not scientific but religious. He
did not dissipate the demons by turning on an electric light, because
for him they had long ago been routed when the veil of the temple
was rent and the earth quaked and darkness descended upon the face
of the land. Christ in his utter anguish had fused the wrath and the
mercy of God, and put to flight all the legions of Satan.

In Luther's hymns one hears the tramp of marshaled hordes, the
shouts of battle, and the triumph song.

In devil's dungeon chained I lay
The pangs of death swept o'er me.

My sin devoured me night and day
In which my mother bore me.

My anguish ever grew more rife,

I took no pleasure in my life
And sin had made me crazy.

Then was the Father troubled sore

To see me ever languish.
The Everlasting Pity swore

To save me from my anguish.
He turned to me his father heart
And chose himself a bitter part,

His Dearest did it cost him.

66'

THE GOSPEL

Thus spoke the Son, * c FIold thou to me,
From noxv on thoxi xvilt make It.

I gave my very life for thee
Ajnd for rfiee I xvill st^lce it.

For I am tHine and thou art mine,

And xvHere I ana our lives entrvvine,
The Old Fiend cannot shake it."

CHAPTER FOUR

THE ONSLAUGHT

UTHER'S new insights contained already the
marrow of his mature theology. The salient
ideas were present in the lectures on Psalms
and Romans from 1513 to 1516. What came
after was but commentary and sharpening to
obviate misconstruction. The center about
which all the petals clustered was the affirma-
tion of the forgiveness of sins through the ut-
terly unmerited grace of God made possible by the cross of Christ,
which reconciled wrath and mercy, routed the hosts of hell, triumphed
over sin and death, and by the resurrection manifested that power
which enables man to die to sin and rise to newness of life. This was
of course the theology of Paul, heightened, intensified, and clarified.
Beyond these cardinal tenets Luther was never to go.

His development lay rather on the positive side in the drawing of
practical inferences for his theory of the sacraments and the Church,
and on the negative side by way of discovering discrepancies from
contemporary Catholicism. At the start Luther envisaged no reform
other than that of theological education with the stress on the Bible
rather than on the decretals and the scholastics. Not that he was in-
different to the evils of the Church! In his notes for the lectures on
Romans he lashed out repeatedly against the luxury, avarice, igno-
rance, and greed of the clergy and upbraided explicitly the chicanery
of that warrior-pope Julius II. Yet whether these strictures were
ever actually delivered is doubtful; for no record of them appears in
the student notes on the lectures. Luther was, in fact, less impelled

THE ONSLAUGHT

to voice a protest against immoral abuses in the Church than were
some of his contemporaries.

For one reason he was too busy. In October, 1516, he wrote to a
friend:

I could use two secretaries. I do almost nothing during the day but
write letters. I am a conventual preacher, reader at meals, parochial
preacher, director of studies, overseer of eleven monasteries, superintend-
ent of the fish pond at Litzkau, referee of the squabble at Torgau, lec-
turer on Paul, collector of material for a commentary on the Psalms, and
then, as I said, I am overwhelmed with letters. I rarely have full time
for the canonical hours and for saying mass, not to mention my own
temptations with the world, the flesh, and the Devil. You see how lazy
I am.

But out of just such labors arose his activities as a reformer.

As a parish priest in a village church he was responsible for the
spiritual welfare of his flock. They were procuring indulgences as
he had once done himself. Rome was not the only place in which such
favors were available, for the popes delegated to many churches in
Christendom the privilege of dispensing indulgences, and the Castle
Church at Wittenberg was the recipient of a very unusual concession
granting full remission of all sins. The day selected for the proclama-
tion was the first of November, the day of All Saints, whose merits
provided the ground of the indulgences and whose relics were then
on display. Frederick the Wise, the elector of Saxony, Luther's prince,
was a man of simple and sincere piety who had devoted a lifetime to
making Wittenberg the Rome of Germany as a depository of sacred
relics. He had made a journey to all parts of Europe, and diplomatic
negotiations were facilitated by an exchange of relics. The king of
Denmark, for example, sent him fragments of King Canute and St.
Brigitta.

The collection had as its nucleus a genuine thorn from the crown
of Christ, certified to have pierced the Saviour's brow. Frederick so
built up the collection from this inherited treasure that the catalogue
illustrated by Lucas Cranach in 1509 listed 5,005 particles, to which

FREDERICK THE WISE ADORING THE VIRGIN AND CHILD

THE ONSLAUGHT

were attached indulgences calculated to reduce purgatory by 1,443
years. The collection included one tooth of St. Jerome, of St. Chrysos-
tom four pieces, of St. Bernard six, and of St. Augustine four; of Our
Lady four hairs, three pieces of her cloak, four from her girdle, and
seven from the veil sprinkled with the blood of Christ. The relics of
Christ included one piece from his swaddling clothes, thirteen from
his crib, one wisp of straw, one piece of the gold brought by the
Wise Men and three of the myrrh, one strand of Jesus' beard, one of
the nails driven into his hands, one piece of bread eaten at the Last
Supper, one piece of the stone on which Jesus stood to ascend into
heaven, and one twig of Moses' burning bush. By 1520 the collection
had mounted to 19,013 holy bones. Those who viewed these relics on
the designated day and made the stipulated contributions might re-
ceive from the pope indulgences for the reduction of purgatory,
either for themselves or others, to the extent of 1,902,202 years and
270 days. These were the treasures made available on the day of All
Saints.

Three times during his sermons of the year 1516 Luther spoke
critically of these indulgences. The third of these occasions was
Halloween, the eve of All Saints. Luther spoke moderately and with-
out certainty on all points. But on some he was perfectly assured. No
one, he declared, can know whether the remission of sins is complete,
because complete remission is granted only to those who exhibit
worthy contrition and confession, and no one can know whether
contrition and confession are perfectly worthy. To assert that the
pope can deliver souls from purgatory is audacious. If he can do so,
then he is cruel not to release them all. But if he possesses this ability,
he is in a position to do more for the dead than for the living. The
purchasing of indulgences in any case is highly dangerous and likely
to induce complacency. Indulgences can remit only those private
satisfactions imposed by the Church, and may easily militate against
interior penance, which consists in true contrition, true confession,
and true satisfaction in spirit.

Luther records that the elector took this sermon amiss. Well he
might, because indulgences served not merely to dispense the merits

of the saints but also to raise revenues. They were the bingo of the
sixteenth century. The practice grew out of the crusades. At first
indulgences were conferred on those who sacrificed or risked their
lives in fighting against the infidel, and then were extended to those
who, unable to go to the Holy Land, made contributions to the en-
terprise. The device proved so lucrative that it was speedily extended
to cover the construction of churches, monasteries, and hospitals.
The gothic cathedrals were financed in this way. Frederick the Wise
was using an indulgence to reconstruct a bridge across the Elbe. In-
dulgences, to be sure, had not degenerated into sheer mercenariness.
Conscientious preachers sought to evoke a sense of sin, and presum-
ably only those genuinely concerned made the purchases. Neverthe-
less, the Church today readily concedes that the indulgence traffic
was a scandal, so much so that a contemporary preacher phrased the
requisites as three: contrition, confession, and contribution.

A cartoon by Holbein makes the point that the handing over of
the indulgence letter was so timed as not to anticipate the dropping of
the money into the coffer. We see in this cartoon a chamber with

the pope enthroned. He is probably Leo X because the arms of the
Medici appear frequently about the walls. The pope is handing a letter
of indulgence to a kneeling Dominican. In the choir stalls on either
side are seated a number of church dignitaries. On the right one of
them lays his hand upon the head of a kneeling youth and with a stick
points to a large ironbound chest for the contributions, into which a
woman is dropping her mite. At the table on the left various Domini-
cans are preparing and dispensing indulgences. One of them repulses
a beggar who has nothing to give in exchange, while another is care-
fully checking the money and withholding the indulgences until the
full amount has been received. In contrast he shows on the left the
true repentance of David, Manasseh, and a notorious sinner, who ad-
dress themselves only to God.

The indulgences dispensed at Wittenberg served to support the
Castle Church and the university. Luther's attack, in other words,
struck at the revenue of his own institution. This first blow was cer-
tainly not the rebellion of an exploited German against the mulcting
of his country by the greedy Italian papacy. However much in after

HERE I STAND

years Luther's followers may have been motivated by such considera-
tions, his first onslaught was not so prompted. He was a priest re-
sponsible for the eternal welfare of his parishioners. He must warn
them against spiritual pitfalls, no matter what might happen to the
Castle Church and the university.

THE INDULGENCE FOR ST. PETER^S

In 1517, the year following, his attention was called to another
instance of the indulgence traffic fraught with far-reaching ramifica-
tions. The affair rose out of the pretensions of the house of Hohen-
zollern to control the ecclesiastical and civil life of Germany. An
accumulation of ecclesiastical benefices in one family was an excellent
expedient, because every bishop controlled vast revenues, and some
bishops were princes besides, Albert of Brandenburg, of the house of
Hohenzollern, when not old enough to be a bishop at all, held already
the sees of Halberstadt and Magdeburg, and aspired to the archbishop-
ric of Mainz, which would make him the primate of Germany.

He knew that he would have to pay well for his office. The instal-
lation fee was ten thousand ducats, and the parish could not afford it,
being already depleted through the deaths of three archbishops in a
decade. One of them apologized for dying after an incumbency of
only four years, thereby so soon involving his flock in the fee for his
successor. The diocese offered the post to Albert if he would dis-
charge the fee himself. He realized that he would have to pay the pope
in addition for the irregularity of holding three sees at once and prob-
ably still more to counteract the pressures of the rival house of Haps-
burg on the papacy.

Yet Albert was confident that money would speak, because the
pope needed it so badly. The pontiff at the moment was Leo X, of
the house of Medici, as elegant and as indolent as a Persian cat. His
chief pre-eminence lay in his ability to squander the resources of the
Holy See on carnivals, war, gambling, and the chase. The duties of
his holy office were seldom suffered to interfere with sport. He wore
long hunting boots which impeded the kissing of his toe. The re-
sources of three papacies were dissipated by his profligacy: the goods

THE ONSLAUGHT

of his predecessors, himself, and his successor. The Catholic historian
Ludwig von Pastor declared that the ascent of this man in an hour of
crisis to the chair of St. Peter, " a man who scarcely so much as under-
stood the obligations of his
high office, was one of the
most severe trials to which
God ever subjected his
Church."

Leo at the moment was par-
ticularly in need of funds to
complete a project com-
menced by his predecessor, the
building of the new St. Peter's.
The old wooden basilica, con-
structed in the age of Con-
stantine, had been condemned,
and the titanic Pope Julius II
had overawed the consistory
into approving the grandiose
scheme of throwing a dome as
large as the Pantheon over the
remains of the apostles Peter
and Paul. The piers were laid; Julius died; the work lagged; weeds
sprouted from the pillars; Leo took over; he needed money.

The negotiations of Albert with the pope were conducted through
the mediation of the German banking house of Fugger, which had a
monopoly on papal finances in Germany. When the Church needed
funds in advance of her revenues, she borrowed at usurious rates from
the sixteenth-century Rothschilds or Morgans. Indulgences were issued
in order to repay the debts, and the Fuggers supervised the collection.

Knowing the role they would ultimately play, Albert turned to
them for the initial negotiations. He was informed that the pope de-
manded twelve thousand ducats for the twelve apostles. Albert offered
seven thousand for the seven deadly sins. They compromised on ten
thousand, presumably not for the Ten Commandments. Albert had to

ALBERT OF BRANDENBURG

HERE I STAND

pay the money down before he could secure his appointment, and
he borrowed the sum from the Fuggers.

Then the pope, to enable Albert to reimburse himself, granted
the privilege of dispensing an indulgence in his territories for the
period of eight years. One half of the return, in addition to the ten
thousand ducats already paid, should go to the pope for the building
of the new St. Peter's; the other half should go to reimburse the
Fuggers.

These indulgences were not actually offered in Luther's parish be-
cause the Church could not introduce an indulgence without the con-
sent of the civil authorities, and Frederick the Wise would not grant
permission in his lands because he did not wish the indulgence of St.
Peter to encroach upon the indulgences of All Saints at Wittenberg.
Consequently the vendors did not enter electoral Saxony, but th^y
came close enough so that Luther's parishioners could go over the
border and return with the most amazing concessions.

In briefing the vendors Albert reached the pinnacle of pretensions
as to the spiritual benefits to be conferred by indulgences. He made
no reference whatever to the repayment of his debt to the Fuggers.
The instructions declared that a plenary indulgence had been issued
by His Holiness Pope Leo X to defray the expenses of remedying
the sad state of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul and the innumer-
able martyrs and saints whose bones lay moldering, subject to con-
stant desecration from rain and hail. Subscribers would enjoy a
plenary and perfect remission of all sins. They would be restored
to the state of innocence which they enjoyed in baptism and would
be relieved of all the pains of purgatory, including those incurred
by an offense to the Divine Majesty. Those securing indulgences on
behalf of the dead already in purgatory need not themselves be con-
trite and confess their sins.

Then let the cross of Christ, continued the instructions, and the
arms of the pope be planted at preaching stations that all might con-
tribute according to their capacity. Kings and queens, archbishops
and bishops, and other great princes were expected to give twenty-
five gold florins. Abbots, cathedral prelates, counts, barons, and

THE ONSLAUGHT

other great nobles and their wives were put down for twenty. Other
prelates and lower nobility should give six. The rate for burghers and
merchants was three. For those more moderately circumstanced, one.

And since we are concerned for the salvation of souls quite as much
as for the construction of this building, none shall be turned empty away.

HAWKING INDULGENCES

So much jnoney is going into the coffer of the vendor that neiv coins have
to be minted on the spot.

The very poor may contribute by prayers and fastings, for the Kingdom
of Heaven belongs not only to the rich but also to the poor.

The proclamation of this indulgence was entrusted to the Dominican
Tetzel, an experienced vendor. As he approached a town, he was met
by the dignitaries, who then entered with him in solemn procession.
A cross bearing the papal arms preceded him, and the pope's bull of
indulgence was borne aloft on a gold-embroidered velvet cushion. The
cross was solemnly planted in the market place, and the sermon began.

HERE I STAND

THE VENDOR

Listen now, God and St. Peter
call you. Consider the salvation
of your souls and those of your
loved ones departed. You priest,
you noble, you merchant, you
virgin, you matron, you youth,
you old man, enter now into
your church, which is the
Church of St. Peter. Visit the
most holy cross erected before
you and ever imploring you.
Have you considered that you
are lashed in a furious tempest
amid the temptations and dan-
gers of the world, and that you
do not know whether you can
reach the haven, not of your
mortal body, but of your im-
mortal soul? Consider that all
who are contrite and have con-
fessed and made contribution will receive complete remission of all their
sins. Listen to the voices of your dear dead relatives and friends, beseech-
ing you and saying, "Pity us, pity us. We are in dire torment from which
you can redeem us for a pittance." Do you not wish to? Open your ears.
Hear the father saying to his son, the mother to her daughter, "We bore
you, nourished you, brought you up, left you our fortunes, and you are
so cruel and hard that now you are not willing for so little to set us free.
Will you let us lie here in flames? will you delay our promised glory?"
Remember that you are able to release them, for

As soon as the coin in the coffer rings,
The soul from purgatory springs.

Will you not then for a quarter of a florin receive these letters of in-
dulgence through which you are able to lead a divine and immortal soul
into the fatherland of paradise?

Such harangues were not being delivered in Wittenberg because
of the prohibition of Frederick the Wise, but Tetzel was just over
the border, not too far away for Luther's parishioners to make the
journey and return with the pardons. They even reported Tetzel to

THE ONSLAUGHT

have said that papal indulgences could absolve a man who had violated
the Mother of God, and that the cross emblazoned with the papal
arms set up by the indulgence sellers was equal to the cross of Christ.
A cartoon published somewhat later by one of Luther's followers
showed the cross in the center empty of all save the nail holes and the
crown of thorns. More prominent beside it stood the papal arms with
the balls of the Medici, while in the foreground the vendor hawked
his wares.

THE NINETY-FIVE THESES

This was too much. Again on the eve of All Saints, when Frederick
the Wise would offer his indulgences, Luther spoke, this time in writ-
ing, by posting in accord with current practice on the door of the
Castle Church a printed placard in the Latin language consisting of
ninety-five theses for debate. Presumably at the time Luther did not
know all the sordid details of Albert's transaction. He must have
known that Albert would get
half the returns, but he directed
his attack solely against Tetzel's
reputed sermon and Albert's
printed instructions, which
marked the apex of unbridled
pretensions as to the efficacy of
indulgences. Sixtus IV in 1476
had promised immediate release
to souls in purgatory. Tetzel's
jingle thus rested on papal au-
thority. And Leo X in 1513 had
promised crusaders plenary re-
mission of all sins and reconcilia-
tion with the Most High. Albert
assembled the previous preten-
sions and in addition dispensed
explicitly with contrition on the

THE CASTLE CHURCH

HERE I STAND

part of those who purchased on behalf of the dead in purgatory.

Luther's Theses differed from the ordinary propositions for debate
because they were forged in anger. The ninety-five affirmations are
crisp, bold, unqualified. In the ensuing discussion he explained his
meaning more fully. The following summary draws alike on the
Theses and the subsequent explications. There were three main points:
an objection to the avowed object of the expenditure, a denial of the
powers of the pope over purgatory, and a consideration of the welfare
of the sinner.

The attack focused first on the ostensible intent to spend the money
in order to shelter the bones of St. Peter beneath a universal shrine of
Christendom. Luther retorted:

The revenues of all Christendom are being sucked into this insatiable
basilica. The Germans laugh at calling this the common treasure of Chris-
tendom. Before long all the churches, palaces, walls, and bridges of Rome
will be built out of our money. First of all we should rear living temples,
next local churches, and only last of all St. Peter's, which is not necessary
for us. We Germans cannot attend St. Peter's. Better that it should never
be built than that our parochial churches should be despoiled. The pope
would do better to appoint one good pastor to a church than to confer
indulgences upon them all. Why doesn't the pope build the ( basilica of
St. Peter out of his own money? He is richer than Croesus. He would
do better to sell St. Peter's and give the money to the poor folk who are
being fleeced by the hawkers of indulgences. If the pope knew the
exactions of these vendors, he would rather that St. Peter's should lie in
ashes than that it should be built out of the blood and hide of his sheep.

This polemic would evoke a deep Ja ivohl among the Germans,
who for some time had been suffering from a sense of grievance against
the venality of the Italian curia and often quite overlooked the venal-
ity of the German confederates. Luther lent himself to this distortion
by accepting Albert's picture of the money going all to Rome rather
than to the coffers of the Fuggers. Yet in a sense Albert's picture was
right. He was only being reimbursed for money which had already
gone to Rome. In any case, however, the financial aspect was the least

THE ONSLAUGHT

in Luther's eyes. He was ready to undercut the entire practice even
though not a gulden left Wittenberg.

His second point denied the power of the pope over purgatory for
the remission of either sin or penalty. The absolution of sin is given
to the contrite in the sacrament of penance.

Papal indulgences do not remove guilt. Beware of those who say that
indulgences effect reconciliation with God. The power of the keys can-
not make attrition into contrition. He who is contrite has plenary remis-
sion of guilt and penalty without indulgences. The pope can remove
only those penalties which he himself has imposed on earth, for Christ
did not say, "Whatsoever I have bound in heaven you may loose on
earth."

The penalties of purgatory the pope cannot reduce because
these have been imposed by God, and the pope does not have at his
disposal a treasury of credits
available for transfer.

The saints have no extra
credits. Every saint is bound to
love God to the utmost. There
is no such thing as supereroga-
tion. If there were any super-
fluous credits, they could not be
stored up for subsequent use.
The Holy Spirit would have
used them fully long ago. Christ
indeed had merits, but until I
am better instructed I deny that
they are indulgences. His merits
are freely available without the
keys of the pope.

Therefore I claim that the
pope has no jurisdiction over
purgatory. I am willing to re-
verse this judgment if the
Church so pronounces. If the
pope does have the power to

FORGIVENESS FROM CHRIST OUTWEIGHS
INDULGENCES FROM THE POPE

HERE I STAND

release anyone from purgatory, why in the name of love does he not
abolish purgatory by letting everyone out? If for the sake of miserable
money he released uncounted souls, why should he not for the sake
of most holy love empty the place? To say that souls are liberated from
purgatory is audacious. To say they are released as soon as the coin in
the coffer rings is to incite avarice. The pope would do better to give
away everything without charge. The only power which the pope has
over purgatory is that of making intercession on behalf of souls, and
this power is exercised by any priest or curate in his parish.

Luther's attack thus far could in no sense be regarded as heretical
or original. Even though Albert's instructions rested on papal bulls,
there had as yet been no definitive pronouncement, and many theo-
logians would have endorsed Luther's claims.

But he had a more devastating word:

Indulgences are positively harmful to the recipient because they impede
salvation by diverting charity and inducing a false sense of security.
Christians should be taught that he who gives to the poor is better than
he who receives a pardon. He who spends his money for indulgences
instead of relieving want receives not the indulgence of the pope but
the indignation of God. We are told that money should be given by
preference to the poor only in the case of extreme necessity. I suppose
we are not to clothe the naked and visit the sick. What is extreme
necessity? Why, I ask, does natural humanity have such goodness that it
gives itself freely and does not calculate necessity but is rather solicitous
that there should not be any necessity? And will the charity of God,
which is incomparably kinder, do none of these things? Did Christ say,
"Let him that has a cloak sell it and buy an indulgence"? Love covers a
multitude of sins and is better than all the pardons of Jerusalem and
Rome.

Indulgences are most pernicious because they induce complacency and
thereby imperil salvation. Those persons are damned who think that
letters of indulgence make them certain of salvation. God works by
contraries so that a man feels himself to be lost in the very moment
when he is on the point of being saved. When God is about to justify a
man, he damns him. Whom he would make alive he must first kill. God's
favor is so communicated in the form of wrath that it seems farthest when
it is at hand. Man must first cry out that there is no health in him. He
must be consumed with horror. This is the pain of purgatory. I do not

THE ONSLAUGHT

know where it is located, but I do know that it can be experienced in this
life. I know a man who has gone through such pains that had they lasted
for one tenth of an hour he would have been reduced to ashes. In this dis-
turbance salvation begins. When a man believes himself to be utterly
lost, light breaks. Peace comes in the word of Christ through faith. He
who does not have this is lost even though he be absolved a million times
by the pope, and he who does have it may not wish to be released from
purgatory, for true contrition seeks penalty. Christians should be en-
couraged to bear the cross. He who is baptized into Christ must be as a
sheep for the slaughter. The merits of Christ are vastly more potent when
they bring crosses than when they bring remissions.

Luther's Ninety-Five Theses ranged all the way from the com-
plaints of aggrieved Germans to the cries of a wrestler in the night
watches. One portion demanded financial relief, the other called for
the crucifixion of the self. The masses could grasp the first. Only a
few elect spirits would ever comprehend the full import of the second,
and yet in the second lay all the power to create a popular revolution.
Complaints of financial extortion had been voiced for over a century
without visible effect. Men were stirred to deeds only by one who
regarded indulgences not merely as venal but as blasphemy against
the holiness and mercy of God.

Luther took no steps to spread his theses among the people. He was
merely inviting scholars to dispute and dignitaries to define, but
others surreptitiously translated the theses into German and gave them
to the press. In short order they became the talk of Germany. What
Karl Barth said of his own unexpected emergence as a reformer could
be said equally of Luther, that he was like a man climbing in the dark-
ness a winding staircase in the steeple of an ancient cathedral. In the
blackness he reached out to steady himself, and his hand laid hold of
a rope. He was startled to hear the clanging of a bell.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE SON OF INIQUITY

ENERAL dissemination was not in Luther's
mind when he posted the theses. He meant
them for those concerned. A copy was sent
to Albert of Mainz along with the following
letter:

Father in Christ and Most Illustrious Prince,
forgive me that I, the scum of the earth, should
dare to approach Your Sublimity. The Lord Jesus is my witness that I
am well aware of my insignificance and my unworthiness. I make so bold
because of the office of fidelity which I owe to Your Paternity. May Your
Highness look upon this speck of dust and hear my plea for clemency
from you and from the pope.

Luther then reports what he had heard about Tetzel's preaching that
through indulgences men are promised remission, not only of penalty
but also of guilt.

God on high, is this the way the souls entrusted to your care are pre-
pared for death? It is high time that you looked into this matter. I can
be silent no longer. In fear and trembling we must work out our salva-
tion. Indulgences can offer no security but only the remission of external
canonical penalties. Works of piety and charity are infinitely better than
indulgences. Christ did not command the preaching of indulgences but
of the gospel, and what a horror it is, what a peril to a bishop, if he
never gives the gospel to his people except along with the racket of
indulgences. In the instructions of Your Paternity to the indulgence
sellers, issued without your knowledge and consent [Luther offers him

THE SON OF INIQUITY

a way out], indulgences are called the inestimable gift of God for the
reconciliation of man to God and the emptying of purgatory. Contrition
is declared to be unnecessary. What shall I do, Illustrious Prince, if not
to beseech Your Paternity through Jesus Christ our Lord to suppress
utterly these instructions lest someone arise to confute this book and to
bring Your Illustrious Sublimity into obloquy, which I dread but fear
if something is not done speedily? May Your Paternity accept my faith-
ful admonition. I, too, am one of your sheep. May the Lord Jesus guard
you forever. Amen.

WITTENBERG, 1517, on the eve of All Saints

If you will look over my theses, you will see how dubious is the doc-
trine of indulgences, which is so confidently proclaimed.

MARTIN LUTHER, Augustinian Doctor of Theology

Albert forwarded the theses to Rome. Pope Leo is credited with
two comments. In all likelihood neither is authentic, yet each is re-
vealing. The first was this: "Luther is a drunken German. He will feel
different when he is sober." And the second: "Friar Martin is a bril-
liant chap. The whole row is due to the envy of the monks."

Both comments, wherever they originated, contain a measure of
truth. If Luther was not a drunken German who would feel different
when sober, he was an irate German who might be amenable if mol-
lified. If at once the pope had issued the bull of a year later, clearly de-
fining the doctrine of indulgences and correcting the most glaring
abuses, Luther might have subsided. On many points he was not yet
fully persuaded in his own mind, and he was prompted by no itch
for controversy. Repeatedly he was ready to withdraw if his oppo-
nents would abandon the fray. During the four years while his case was
pending his letters reveal surprisingly little preoccupation with the
public dispute. He was engrossed in his duties as a professor and a
parish priest, and much more concerned to find a suitable incumbent
for the chair of Hebrew at the University of Wittenberg than to knock
a layer from the papal tiara. Prompt and straightforward action might
have allayed the outburst.

But the pope preferred to extinguish the friar with a clandestine
snuffer and appointed a new general of the Augustinians that he might

HERE I STAND

"quench a monk of his order, Martin Luther by name, and thus smother
the fire before it should become a conflagration." The first opportunity
came the next May at the regular triennial gathering of the chapter,
meeting in that year at Heidelberg. Luther was scheduled to report on
the completion of his term as vicar and was likewise to defend the
theology of the father of the order, St. Augustine, concerning human
depravity. The question of indulgences was not on the docket, but
the Augustinian theology had provided the ground for Luther's at-
tack.

He had reason to fear the occasion. Warnings of danger came from
many sources. His enemies were boasting, some that he would be
burned within a month, some within two weeks. He was warned of
the possibility of assassination on the road to Heidelberg. "Neverthe-
less," wrote Luther, "I will obey. I am going on foot. Our Prince
[Frederick the Wise] quite unsolicited has undertaken to see that
under no circumstances I shall be taken to Rome." Yet as a precaution
Luther traveled incognito. After four days of tramping he wrote
back, "I am properly contrite for going on foot. Since my contrition
is perfect, full penance has akeady been done, and no indulgence
is needed."

To his amazement he was received at Heidelberg as a guest of honor.
The Count Palatine invited him, along with Staupitz and others, to
dinner and personally conducted them on a tour to see the ornaments
of the chapel and the armor. Before the chapter Luther defended the
Augustinian view that even outwardly upright acts may be mortal sins
in the eyes of God.

"If the peasants heard you say that, they would stone you," was the
frank comment of one hearer, but the company roared. Acrimonious
letters against Luther were presented before the chapter, but there
were no repercussions. The older men did no more than shake their
heads, and the younger were enthusiastic. "I have great hope," Luther
said, "that as Christ, when rejected by the Jews, went over to the Gen-
tiles, so this true theology, rejected by opinionated old men, will pass
over to the younger generation." Among those young men were
several later to be prominent as leaders in the Lutheran movement.

THE SON OF INIQUITY

There were John Brenz, the reformer of Wuerttemberg, and Martin
Bucer, the leader at Strassburg. He was a Dominican who was permit-
ted to attend the public session. "Luther," he reported, "has a marvelous
graciousness in response and unconquerable patience in listening. In
argument he shows the acumen of the apostle Paul. That which Eras-
mus insinuates he speaks openly and freely."

Far from being shunned by the brothers Luther was invited to ride
home with the Niirnberg delegation until their ways diverged. Then
he was transferred to the wagon of the Erf urters, where he found him-
self beside his old teacher, Dr. Usingen. "I talked with him," said
Luther, "and tried to persuade him, but I do not know with what suc-
cess. I left him pensive and dazed." On the whole Luther felt that he
was returning from a triumph. He summed it all up with the comment,
"I went on foot. I came back in a wagon."

THE DOMINICAN ASSAULT

The Augustinians were conceivably the more loath to suppress
their obstreperous brother because their rivals, the Dominicans, were
pressing him hard. This is the truth of the second comment attributed
to Pope Leo. The Dominicans rallied to the aid of Tetzel, who was
granted a doctor's degree that he might be in a position to publish. At
his promotion he roundly defended the jingle,

As soon as the coin in the coffer rings,
The soul from purgatory springs.

His theses were printed. The students at Wittenberg by theft or pur-
chase collected eight hundred copies and, unbeknown to the elector,
the university, or to Luther, committed them to a bonfire. Luther was
highly embarrassed by their impetuosity. To Tetzel he did not deign
a reply.

But he did feel constrained to declare himself more fully to the
general public. The Nmety-Five Theses had been given by the printer
to all Germany, though intended only for professional theologians.
The many bald assertions called for explanation and clarification, but
Luther could never confine himself to a mere reproduction or explica-

HERE I STAND

tion of what he had said previously. The sermons written out by re-
quest on Monday do not correspond to the notes taken by hearers on
Sunday. Ideas were so churning within him that new butter always
came out of the vat. The Resolutions Concerning the Ninety -Five
Theses contain some new points. Luther had made the discovery that
the biblical text from the Latin Vulgate, used to support the sacrament
of penance, was a mistranslation. The Latin for Matt. 4: 17 read pent-
tentiam agite, "do penance," but from the Greek New Testament of
Erasmus, Luther had learned that the original meant simply "be peni-
tent." The literal sense was "change your mind." "Fortified with this
passage," wrote Luther to Staupitz in the dedication of the Resolutions,
"I venture to say they are wrong who make more of the act in Latin
than of the change of heart in Greek." This was what Luther himself
called a "glowing" discovery. In this crucial instance a sacrament of
the Church did not rest on the institution of Scripture.

In a very casual way Luther threw off another remark for which
he was to be severely pressed. "Suppose," said he, "that the Roman
Church were as once it was before the days of Gregory I, when it was
not above the other churches, at least not above the Greek." This was
to say that the primacy of the Roman Church was a historical de-
velopment due rather to the exigencies of history than to divine or-
dination reaching back to the very founding of the Church.

Declarations of such sweeping import soon raised the controversy
far above a mere strife of the orders, and every fresh stage served to
elicit the radicalism implicit in Luther's presuppositions. He was soon
prompted to deny not only the pope's power to release from, but also
his ability to consign to, purgatory. Hearing that he was under the ban,
Luther had the temerity to preach on the ban, declaring, according to
the reports of hostile hearers, that excommunication and reconciliation
affect only the external fellowship of the Church on earth and not
the grace of God. Bishops are impious who excommunicate over money
matters, and they should be disobeyed. These alleged statements were
printed by opponents and shown at the imperial diet to the papal
legates, who were rumored to have sent them to Rome. Luther was
informed that they had done him inestimable damage. To put himself

THE SON OF INIQUITY

in the clear he wrote out for the press what he could remember of
the sermon, but his attempt to conciliate was hardly felicitous. If
Mother Church errs in her censures, said he, we should still honor her
as Christ honored Caiaphas, Annas, and Pilate. Excommunications ap-
ply only to the outward communion of the sacraments, to burial, and
to public prayers. The ban does not commit a man to the Devil unless
he is already consigned. Only God can sever spiritual communion. No
creature can separate us from the love of Christ. We need not fear to
die in a state of excommunication. If the sentence is just, the con-
demned man, if contrite, can still be saved; and if it is unjust, he is
blessed.

The printed sermon was not off the press until the end of August.
In the meantime the more provocative version of his critics took effect.
The pope would no longer dally. From the un-co-operative Augustin-
ians he turned to the Dominicans. Sylvester Prierias, of the Order of
St. Dominic, Master of the Sacred Palace at Rome, was commissioned
to draft a reply to Luther. He produced it in short order. The open-
ing paragraph shifted the focus from indulgences to the ban and the
prerogatives of the pope. Prierias declared that the universal Church
is virtually the Roman Church. The Roman Church consists represen-
tatively in the cardinals, but virtually in the pope. Just as the universal
Church cannot err on faith and morals, nor can a true council, neither
can the Roman Church nor the pope when speaking in his official ca-
pacity. Whoever does not accept the doctrine of the Roman Church *
and of the Roman pontiff as the infallible rule of faith from which
sacred Scripture derives strength and authority is a heretic, and he
who declares that in the matter of indulgences the Roman Church
cannot do what actually it does is a heretic. Then Prierias proceeded
to refute Luther's errors, describing him on the way as a leper with a
brain of brass and a nose of iron.

Luther retorted:

I am sorry now that I despised Tetzel. Ridiculous as he was, he was
more acute than you. You cite no Scripture. You give no reasons. Like
an insidious devil you pervert the Scriptures. You say that the Church

HERE I STAND

consists virtually in the pope. What abominations will you not have to
regard as the deeds of the Church? Look at the ghastly shedding of
blood by Julius II. Look at the outrageous tyranny of Boniface VIII,
who, as 'the proverb declares, "came in as a wolf, reigned as a lion, and
died as a dog." If the Church consists representatively in the cardinals,
what do you make of a general council of the whole Church? You call
me a leper because I mingle truth with error. I am glad you admit there
is some truth. You make the pope into an emperor in power and violence.
The Emperor Maximilian and the Germans will not tolerate this.

The radicalism of this tract lies not in its invective but in its af-
firmation that the pope might err and a council might err and that
only Scripture is the final authority. Prior to the appearance of this
declaration the pope had already taken action. On the seventh of
August, Luther received a citation to appear at Rome to answer
to charges of heresy and contumacy. He was given sixty days in which
to make his appearance. On the following day Luther wrote to the
elector to remind him of his previous assurance that the case would
not be taken to Rome. Then began a tortuous series of negotiations
culminating in Luther's hearing before the Diet of Worms. The sig-
nificance of that occasion is that an assembly of the German nation
came to function as a council of the Catholic Church. The popes
were doing their best to stifle or control councils. The result was that
a secular assembly assumed conciliar functions, but not until after
many other devices had first been tried.

THE CASE TRANSFERRED TO GERMANY

The initial step toward a hearing before a German diet was the
transfer of Luther's trial from Rome to Germany. To this end on
August 8 he besought the intervention of the elector. The plea was
addressed not directly to him but to the court chaplain, George
Spalatin, who from now on played a large role as the intermediary
between the professor and the prince. Frederick was eager that his
right hand might plausibly claim ignorance of the left, and was very
chary of appearing to endorse Luther's opinions or of backing his
person beyond the due of any subject. The elector protested not to

THE SON OF INIQUITY

have spoken with Luther more than twenty words in all his
life. Now in response to the plea transmitted by Spalatin,

Frederick opened negotiations
with Cardinal Cajetan, the pa-
pal legate, to give Luther a per-
sonal hearing in connection
with the forthcoming meeting
of the imperial diet at Augs-
burg. The hearing was to be
private and not before the diet,
but would at least be on Ger-
man soil. The gain on this score
was offset, however, by the
competence and character of
Cardinal Cajetan, a high papal-
ist of integrity and erudition.
He could scarcely tolerate Lu-
ther's Reply to Prierias or the
Sermon on the Ban, and would
be less inclined to moderation
because Emperor Maximilian
had been incensed by the
excerpts from the reputed

sermon and had himself taken the initiative on the fifth of August
in writing to the pope "to set a stop to the most perilous at-
tack of Martin Luther on indulgences lest not only the people but
even the princes be seduced." With the emperor, the pope, and the
cardinal against him Luther had but slender hope of escaping the stake.
He started for Augsburg with grave misgiving. The danger was
vastly greater than three years later when he went to Worms as the
champion of an aroused nation. At this time he was only an Augus-
tinian eremite suspected of heresy. He saw ahead the stake and said
to himself, "Now I must die. What a disgrace I shall be to my par-
ents! " On the road he contracted an intestinal infection and well-nigh
fainted. Even more disconcerting was the recurring doubt whether

SPALATIN

HERE I STAND

the taunt of his critics might after all be right, "Are you alone wise
and all the ages in error?" Luther's friends had advised him not to
enter Augsburg without a safe conduct, and Frederick at length ob-
tained one from Emperor Maximilian. Cajetan, on being consulted,
was incensed. "If you don't trust me/' he said, "why do you ask my
opinion, and if you do why is a safe conduct necessary? "

But the cardinal was in a much more complacent mood than Lu-
ther had reason to know. The diet was already over, and during its
course he had learned much. His mission had been to rally the north
for a great new crusade against the Turk. The Bohemian heretics
should be reconciled in order that they might participate in the enter-
prise; a tax should be levied for the purpose; important persons were
to be enlisted by emoluments and distinctions. The Archbishop of
Mainz was to be elevated to the purple, and Emperor Maximilian to
be decorated with a helmet and dagger as the Protector of the Faith.
Incidentally the tares were to be weeded from the vineyard of the
Lord.

The diet opened with characteristic medieval pageantry and
etiquette. All due deference was shown to the cardinal. Albert of
Mainz received the purple with becoming blushes, and the emperor
accepted the dagger without demur. But when the business began,
the princes were not ready to fight the Turk under the auspices
of the Church. They were through with crusades and averred their
inability to raise a tax after being so exploited by the Church. The
grievances of the German nation were presented, as on many previous
occasions, but this time with fangs. The document declared:

These sons of Nimrod grab cloisters, abbeys, prebends, canonates, and
parish churches, and they leave these churches without pastors, the
people without shepherds. Annates and indulgences increase. In cases
before the ecclesiastical courts the Roman Church smiles on both sides
for a little palm grease. German money in violation of nature flies over
the Alps. The pastors given to us are shepherds only in name. They care
for nothing but fleece and batten on the sins of the people. Endowed
masses are neglected, the pious founders cry for vengeance. Let the
Holy Pope Leo stop these abuses.

THE SON OF INIQUITY

Cajetan failed in all his large objectives. The crusade and the tax
had been rejected. Could he succeed better with the weed in the
vineyard of the Lord? He sensed that he must tread warily, but he
was shackled by papal instructions which allowed him only to recon-
cile Luther to the Church in case he recanted, and, in case he did
not, to send him bound to Rome. The aid of the secular arm should
be invoked, particularly of Emperor Maximilian, whose remonstrance
may well have prompted the pope's instructions.

The genuineness of this papal document was first impugned by
Luther and subsequently by modern historians on the ground that
the pope would not take such summary action before the expiration
of the sixty days allowed in the citation. But the pope had merely
given Luther sixty days in which to appear, and had made no promises
in case he did not. Besides, as Cardinal de Medici wrote to Cajetan
on the seventh of October, "In cases of notorious heresy no further
ceremony or citation needs to be observed."

The genuineness of these instructions cannot be absolutely estab-
lished because the original is not extant. The Vatican archives con-
tain, however, the manuscript of another letter written on the very
same day by the pope to Frederick, which is no less peremptory.

Beloved son, the apostolic benediction be upon you. We recall that
the chief ornament of your most noble family has been devotion to the
faith of God and to the honor and dignity of the Holy See. Now we
hear that a son of iniquity, Brother Martin Luther of the Augustinian
eremites, hurling himself upon the Church of God, has your support.
Even though we know it to be false, we must urge you to clear the
reputation of your noble family from such calumny. Having been advised
by the Master of the Sacred Palace that Luther's teaching contains
heresy, we have cited him to appear before Cardinal Cajetan. We call
upon you to see that Luther is placed in the hands and under the juris-
diction of this Holy See lest future generations reproach you with having
fostered the rise of a most pernicious heresy against the Church of God.

THE INTERVIEWS WITH CAJETAN

In the light of this letter the instructions to Cajetan need not be
doubted on the score of the content. Obviously they curtailed his

HERE I STAND

freedom, and a fresh memorandum limited him to inquiry as to
Luther's teaching. There should be no discussion. Three interviews
took place-on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday the twelfth
through the fourteenth of October, 1518. Staupitz was among those
present. On the first day Luther prostrated himself in all humility,

THE INTERVIEW WITH CAJETAN

and the cardinal raised him up in all paternity and then informed
him that he must recant. Luther answered that he had not made the
arduous journey to Augsburg to do what he could have done quite as
well at Wittenberg. He would like to be instructed as to his errors.
The cardinal replied that the chief was the denial of the Church's
treasury of merit clearly enunciated in the bull Unigenitus of Pope
Clement VI in the year 1343. "Here," said Cajetan, "y ou have a
statement by the pope that the merits of Christ are a treasure of
indulgences." Luther, who knew the text well, answered that he would
recant if it said so. Cajetan chuckled, leafed through the page to the
spot where it said that Christ by his sacrifice acquired a treasure.
"Oh, yes," said Luther, "but you said that the merits of Christ are

THE SON OF INIQUITY

a treasure. This says he acquired a treasure. To be and to acquire
do not mean the same thing. You need not think we Germans are
ignorant of grammar."

The reply was both rude and irrelevant. Luther blustered because
he was cornered. Any unprejudiced reader would have said that
the cardinal correctly paraphrased the sense of the decretal which
declares that Christ by his sacrifice acquired a treasure which through
the power of the keys has been placed at the disposal of Peter and
his successors in order to release the faithful from temporal penalties.
This treasure has been increased by the merits of the Blessed Virgin
and the saints. The pope dispenses this store as a treasury to those
who visit Rome in the jubilee year 1350, when to those penitent and
confessed may be given full remission of all their sins.

The whole concept of the treasury of the surplus merits of Christ
and the saints is unmistakably here, but Luther was trapped because
he must recant or reject the decretal or interpret it in an acceptable
sense. He tried the latter and, realizing the delicacy of the task,
requested to be allowed to submit a statement in writing, remarking
en passant that they had "wrangled quite enough." The cardinal
was nettled, for he realized that he had gone beyond his instructions
in debating with Luther. "My son," he snapped, "I did not wrangle
with you. I am ready to reconcile you with the Roman Church."
But since reconciliation was possible only through recantation, Lutker
protested that he ought not to be condemned unheard and unrefuted.
"I am not conscious," said he, "of going against Scripture, the fathers,
the decretals, or right reason. I may be in error. I will submit to the
judgment of the universities of Basel, Freiburg, Louvain, and, if need
be, of Paris." This was a most undiplomatic attempt to evade the
cardinal's jurisdiction.

The written statement was only a more ingenious and labored
effort to place a favorable construction on the decretal. Cajetan
must have impressed this upon Luther, for he shifted ground and
came out with a blunt rejection of the decretal and of the authority
of the pope who formulated it. "I am not so audacious that for the

HERE I STAND

sake of a single obscure and ambiguous decretal of a human pope
I would recede from so many and such clear testimonies of divine
Scripture. For, as one of the canon lawyers has said, 'in a matter
of faith not only is a council above a pope but any one of the faithful,
if armed with better authority and reason.' " The cardinal reminded
Luther that Scripture has itself to be interpreted. The pope is the
interpreter. The pope is above a council, above Scripture, above
everything in the Church. "His Holiness abuses Scripture," retorted
Luther. "I deny that he is above Scripture." The cardinal flared up
and bellowed that Luther should leave and never come back unless
he was ready to say, "Revoco" "I recant."

Luther wrote home that the cardinal was no more fitted to handle
the case than an ass to play on a harp. The cartoonists before long
took up the theme and pictured the pope himself in this pose.

Cajetan promptly cooled off and had dinner with Staupitz, urging
him to induce Luther to recant and insisting that Luther had no

better friend than he. Staupitz answered,
"I have often tried, but I am not equal
to him in ability and command of Scrip-
ture. You are the pope's representative.
It is up to you."

"I am not going to talk with him any
more," said the cardinal. "His eyes are as
deep as a lake, and there are amazing
speculations in his head."

Staupitz released Luther from his vow
. of obedience to the order. He may have
\\ wished to relieve the Augustinians of
the onus, or he may have sought to un-
fetter the friar, but Luther felt that he
had been disclaimed. "I was excommuni-
cated three times," he said later, "first
by Staupitz, secondly by the pope, and thirdly by the emperor."

He waited until the next week in Augsburg to see whether he
would be summoned further, then posted an appeal from Cajetan

THE POPE AS AN Ass
PLAYING BAGPIPES

THE SON OF INIQUITY

to the pope, pointing out that since the doctrine of indulgences

had never been officially declared, a debate on dubious questions

should not be regarded as heresy, especially on points unessential

for salvation. Luther com-

plained of the citation to Rome

which would submit him to

the Dominicans. Besides, Rome

would not be a safe place

even with a safe conduct. In

Rome not even Pope Leo him-

self was safe. The reference

was to a conspiracy, lately dis-

closed, among the very cardi-

nals to poison His Holiness.

In any case Luther as a mendi-

cant had no funds for the

journey. He had been gra- THE CARDINAL-FOOL

ciously received by Cajetan, but instead of being allowed to debate
had been given only an opportunity to recant. The proposal to sub-
mit the case to the universities had been spurned. "I feel that I have
not had justice because I teach nothing save what is in Scripture.
Therefore I appeal from Leo badly informed to Leo better informed."
Rumor then reached Luther that the cardinal was empowered to
arrest him. The gates of the city were being guarded. With the con-
nivance of friendly citizens Luther escaped by night, fleeing in such
haste that he had to ride horseback in his cowl without breeches,
spurs, stirrups, or a sword. He arrived in Niirnberg and there was
shown the pope's instructions to Cajetan. Luther questioned the
authenticity but at the same time contemplated an appeal from the
pope to a general council. On the thirtieth day of October he was
back in Wittenberg.

THREATENING EXILE

His tenure there became highly precarious. Cajetan sent his report
of the interview to Frederick the Wise, declaring that what Luther

HERE I STAND

had said with regard to the papal decretal was not fit to put on paper.
Let Frederick either send Luther bound to Rome or else banish him
from his territories. The elector showed this to Luther, who made the
matter still more difficult for his prince by publishing a version of the
interview with Cajetan strengthened by subsequent reflection. There
was no longer any attempt to explain the papal decretal in a favorable
sense. Instead it was called emphatically false. The ambiguous decretal
of a mortal pope was contrasted with the clear testimonies of holy
Scripture. Luther continued:

You are not a bad Christian if you deny the decretal. But if you deny
the gospel, you are a heretic. I damn and detest this decretal. The Apos-
tolic Legate opposed me with the thunder of his majesty and told me to
recant. I told him the pope abused Scripture. I will honor the sanctity of
the pope, but I will adore the sanctity of Christ and the truth. I do not

deny this new monarchy of the Roman Church which has arisen in our

* *r

generation, but I deny that you cannot be a Christian without being
subject to the decrees of the Roman pontiff. As for that decretal, I deny
that the merits of Christ are a treasure of indulgences because his merits
convey grace apart from the pope. The merits of Christ take away sins
and increase merits. Indulgences take away merits and leave sins. These
adulators put the pope above Scripture and say that he cannot err. In
that case Scripture perishes, and nothing is left in the Church save the
word of man. I resist those who in the name of the Roman Church wish

to institute Babylon.

On the twenty-eighth of November, Luther lodged with a notary
an appeal from the pope to a general council, declaring that such a
council, legitimately called in the Holy Spirit, represents the Catholic
Church and is above the pope, who, being a man, is able to err, sin, and
lie. Not even St. Peter was above this infirmity. If the pope orders
anything against divine mandates, he is not to be obeyed.

Therefore from Leo badly advised and from his excommunication,
suspension, interdict, censures, sentences, and fines, and whatsoever de-
nunciations and declarations of heresy and apostasy, which I esteem as
null, nay, as iniquitous and tyrannical, I appeal to a general council
in a safe place.

THE SON OF INIQUITY

Luther had the appeal printed and requested that all the copies be
committed to him to be released only if he was actually banned, but
the printer disregarded the injunction and gave them at once to the
public. This put Luther in a most exposed position because Pope
Julius II had ruled that an appeal without papal consent to a council
would itself constitute heresy.

Frederick the Wise was doubly embarrassed. He was a most Cath-
olic prince, addicted to the cult of relics, devoted to indulgences, quite
sincere in his claim that he was not in a position to judge Luther's
teaching. On such matters he craved guidance, That was why he had
founded the University of Wittenberg and why he so often turned
to it for advice on matters juristic and theological. Luther was one of
the doctors of that university, commissioned to instruct his prince
in matters of faith. Was the prince to believe that his doctor of Holy
Scripture was in error? Of course, if the pope declared him to be a
heretic, that would settle the matter, but the pope had not yet passed
sentence. The theological faculty at Wittenberg had not repudiated
Luther. Many scholars throughout Germany believed him to be
right. If Frederick should take action prior to papal condemnation,
might he not be resisting the word of God? On the other hand, the
pope had urged that Luther be taken into custody and had called
him a "son of iniquity." Might not a refusal to comply mean the har-
boring of a heretic? Such questions troubled Frederick. He differed
from other princes of his time in that he never asked how to extend
his boundaries nor even how to preserve his dignities. His only ques-
tion was, "What is my duty as a Christian prince?" At this juncture
he was gravely disturbed and would take no action beyond writing
on the nineteenth of November beseeching the emperor either to
drop the case or to grant a hearing before unimpeachable judges in
Germany.

Luther wrote to the elector:

I am sorry that the legate blames you. He is trying to bring the whole
House of Saxony into disrepute. He suggests that you send me to Rome
or banish me. What am I, a poor monk, to expect if I am banished?
Since I am in danger enough in your territory, what would it be outside?

HERE I STAND

But lest Your Honor suffer on my account I will gladly leave your
dominions.

To Staupitz, Luther wrote:

The prince opposed the publication of my version of the interview
but has at length given his consent. The legate has asked him to send
me to Rome or banish me. The prince is very solicitous for me, but he
would be happier if I were somewhere else. I told Spalatin if the ban
came I would leave. He dissuaded me from precipitant flight to France.

When at Augsburg one of the Italians had asked Luther where he
would go if abandoned by the prince, he had answered, "Under the
open sky."
On the twenty-fifth of November he sent word to Spalatin:

I am expecting the curses of Rome any day. I have everything in
readiness. When they come, I am girded like Abraham to go I know not
where, but sure of this, that God is everywhere.

Staupitz wrote Luther from Salzburg in Austria:

The world hates the truth. By such hate Christ was crucified, and
what there is in store for you today if not the cross I do not know. You
have few friends, and would that they were not hidden for fear of the
adversary. Leave Wittenberg and come to me that we may live and die
together. The prince [Frederick] is in accord. Deserted let us follow
the deserted Christ.

Luther told his congregation that he was not saying good-by; but if
they should find him gone, then let this be his farewell. He entertained
a few friends at supper. In another two hours he would have left had
not a letter come from Spalatin saying that the prince wished him to
stay. Precisely what had happened we shall never know. Years after-
ward Luther declared that the prince had in mind a plan to hide him,
but a few weeks after the event Luther wrote, "At first the prince
would have been willing not to have me here." Two years later Fred-
erick justified himself before Rome for taking no action against Lu-

100

THE SON OF INIQUITY

ther on the ground that he had been ready to accept Luther's offer
to leave when word came from the papal nuncio advising that Luther
would be much less dangerous under surveillance than at large. Fred-
erick of course might have said this after the event, even though secret-
ly he had entertained the design of spiriting Luther to some hide-out.
Yet it is equally possible that for a moment Frederick was ready to
yield but delayed until after the pope had made his move. At any rate
on the eighteenth of December, Frederick sent to Cajetan the only
document he ever addressed to the Roman curia on Luther's behalf:

We are sure that you acted paternally toward Luther, but we under-
stand that he was not shown sufficient cause to revoke. There are learned
men in the universities who hold that his teaching has not been shown to
be unjust, unchristian, or heretical. The few who think so are jealous of
his attainments. If we understood his doctrine to be impious or untenable,
we would not defend it. Our whole purpose is to fulfill the office of a
Christian prince. Therefore we hope that Rome will pronounce on the
question. As for sending him to Rome or banishing him, that we will do
only after he has been convicted of heresy. His offer to debate and sub-
mit to the judgment of the universities ought to be considered. He
should be shown in what respect he is a heretic and not condemned in
advance. We will not lightly permit ourselves to be drawn into error
nor to be made disobedient to the Holy See. We wish you to know that
the Univeristy of Wittenberg has recently written on his behalf. A copy
is appended.

Luther commented to Spalatin:

I have seen the admirable words of our Most Illustrious Prince to our
Lord the Legate of Rome. Good God, with what joy I read them and
read them over again!

101

CHAPTER SIX

THE SAXON Hus

RESUMABLY the shift in papal policy was due
in part to the discerning reports of Cardinal
Cajetan. He well knew that a man may be a
vexation without being a heretic, because
heresy involves a rejection of the established
dogma of the Church, and the doctrine of in-
dulgences had not yet received an official pa-
pal definition. The pope must first speak; and
only then, if Luther refused to submit, could he properly be placed
under the ban. A papal declaration was at last forthcoming, composed
in all likelihood by Cajetan himself. On November 9, 1518, the bull
Cum Postquam definitely clarified many of the disputed points. In-
dulgences were declared to apply only to penalty and not to guilt,
which must first have been remitted through the sacrament of pen-
ance. Not the eternal pains of hell but only the temporal penalties
of earth and purgatory might be diminished. Over the penalties im-
posed on earth by himself, the pope of course exercised complete
jurisdiction by virtue of the power of absolution. But in the case of
the penalties of purgatory he could do no more than present to God
the treasury of the superfluous merits of Christ and the saints by way
of petition. This decretal terminated some of the worst abuses.

Had it appeared earlier, the controversy might conceivably have
been terminated, but in the interim Luther had attacked not only
the papal power to loose but also the power to bind through the ban.
He had further declared the pope and councils to be capable of error.
He had undercut the biblical text used to support the sacrament of

102

THE SAXON HUS

penance and had rejected a portion of the canon law as incompatible
with Scripture. The Dominicans had called him a notorious heretic,
and the pope had referred to him as a son of iniquity.

But how was he to be handled? The conciliatory policy commenced
in December, 1518, was prompted by considerations of politics. The
pope knew that the plan for a crusade had been repudiated, that the
tax had been refused, that the grievances of the German nation were
recriminatory. There was a more serious consideration. Emperor
Maximilian died on the twelfth of January. An election to the office
of Holy Roman Emperor was thereby precipitated, and for some
time earlier Maximilian was known to have been scheming to ensure
the election of his grandson Charles as his successor.

The empire was a waning but still imposing legacy from the Middle
Ages. The office of emperor was elective, and any European prince
was eligible. The electors were, however, preponderantly German and
preferred a German. Yet they were realistic enough to perceive that
no German had sufficient strength in his own right to sustain the of-
fice. For that reason they were ready to accept the head of one of
the great powers, and the choice lay between Francis of France and
Charles of Spain. The pope objected, however, to either because an
accretion of power on one side or the other would destroy that
balance on which papal security depended. When the Germans de-
spaired of a German, the pope threw his support to Frederick the
Wise. Under such circumstances his wishes with regard to Martin
Luther could not lightly be disregarded. The situation of course was
altered when Frederick, sensible of his inadequacy, defeated himself
by voting for the Hapsburg who on June 28, 1519, was chosen as
Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire. Yet the situation did not so
greatly alter, because for fully a year and a half thereafter Charles
was too occupied in Spain to concern himself with Germany, and
Frederick remained the pivotal figure. The pope still could not afford
to alienate him unduly over Luther.

Papal policy became conciliatory; and Cajetan was assigned an
assistant, a German related to Frederick the Wise, Carl von Miltitz
by name, whose assignment was to curry the favor of the elector and

103

HERE I STAND

to keep Luther quiet until the election was settled. For these ends
Miltitz was equipped with every arrow in the quiver of the Vatican,
from indulgences to interdicts. In order to soften Frederick he brought
new privileges for the Castle Church at Wittenberg, whereby to those
who made appropriate contributions purgatory might be reduced by
a hundred years for every bone of the saints in Frederick's famous
collection. He was further honored by a long-coveted distinction,
the gift of a golden rose from the hand of the pope. In conferring this
honor Leo X wrote to him:

Beloved son, the most holy golden rose was consecrated by us on the
fourteenth day of the holy fast. It was anointed with holy oil and
sprinkled with fragrant incense with the papal benediction. It will be
presented to you by our most beloved son, Carl von Miltitz, of noble
blood and noble manners. This rose is the symbol of the most precious
blood of our Saviour, by which we are redeemed. The rose is a flower
among flowers, the fairest and most fragrant on earth. Therefore, dear
son, permit the divine fragrance to enter the innermost heart of Your
Excellency, that you may fulfill whatever the aforementioned Carl von
Miltitz shall show you.

No little delay occurred in the delivery of the rose, because it was
deposited for safekeeping in the bank of the Fuggers at Augsburg.

Frederick suggested another reason for the delay. "Miltitz," he
said, "may refuse to give me the golden rose unless I banish the monk
and pronounce him a heretic." Luther heard that Miltitz was armed
with a papal brief which made the gift of the rose conditional on his
extradition, but that Miltitz was deterred from taking this course
by the prudence of a cardinal who exclaimed, "You are a pack of
fools if you think you can buy the monk from the prince." Miltitz
was most certainly preceded by letters from the pope and the curia
to Frederick urging all to assist against that "child of Satan, son of
perdition, scrofulous sheep, and tare in the vineyard, Martin Luther."
Brother Martin fully expected to be arrested, and Miltitz may have
started out with that intent. "I learned afterwards," wrote Luther to
Staupitz, "at the court of the prince, that Miltitz came armed with

104

THE SAXON HUS

seventy apostolic briefs, that he might take me to the Jerusalem
which kills the prophets, the purple Babylon." Miltitz boasted in
Germany that he had the friar in his pocket, but he was made quick-
ly aware that too peremptory a course would not be discreet. In the
inns on the way he questioned the people and discovered that for
every one in favor of the pope there were three for Luther. He frank-
ly confessed that no case had so plagued the Church in a thousand
years, and Rome would gladly pay ten thousand ducats to have it
out of the way. The curia was prepared to do even more than that.
Frederick the Wise was given to understand that if he were compliant
he might be permitted to name a cardinal. He took this to mean that
the dignity might be conferred on Luther.

Miltitz arrived full of blandishments. In one interview he said to
Luther, "We'll have it all fixed up in no time." He asked of Luther
that he should subscribe to the new papal decretal on indulgences.
Luther replied that there was not a word in it from Scripture. Then
Miltitz required of him but one thing, that he should refrain from
debate and publication if his opponents would observe the same con-
dition. Luther promised. Miltitz wept. "Crocodile tears," commented
Luther.

Tetzel was made the scapegoat. Miltitz summoned him to a hearing
and charged that he was extravagant in traveling with two horses
and a carriage, and that he had two illegitimate children. Tetzel re-
tired to a convent to die of chagrin. Luther wrote to him, "Don't take
it too hard. You didn't start this racket. The child had another fa-
ther." The elector in the meantime took advantage of his singular
position to use Miltitz for a plan of his own. Let Luther's case be re-
ferred to a commission of German ecclesiastics under the chairman-
ship of the Archbishop of Trier, Richard of Greiff enklau, who might
please the Germans because he was an elector, the pope because he
was an archbishop, and Luther because in the election he was oppos-
ing the papal candidate. Cajetan was won for the scheme, and Richard
expressed his willingness. Frederick arranged with him that the hear-
ing take place at the forthcoming meeting of the Diet of Worms.

105

HERE I STAND

But the pope neither authorized nor disavowed the proposal, and for
the moment nothing came of it.

Luther in the meantime became involved in further debate. He
had agreed to refrain from controversy only if his opponents also

observed the truce, and they
did not. The universities
were becoming involved.
The University of Witten-
berg was coming to be re-
garded as a Lutheran insti-
tution. Prominent among the
faculty were Carlstadt and
Melanchthon. The former
was Luther's senior and had
conferred on him the doc-
tor's hood. Carlstadt was
erudite but devoid of the
caution which learning
PHILIP MELANCHTHON sometimes induces. He was

sensitive, impressionable,

impetuous, and at times tumultuous. His espousal of Luther's teach-
ings prompted him to indulge in such blasts against critics that Luther
himself was prone at times to wince.

Melanchthon was gentler, younger only twenty-one a prodigy
of learning, enjoying already a European reputation. In appearance
he was not prepossessing, as he had an impediment of speech and a
hitch in the shoulder when he walked. Luther once, when asked how
he envisaged the appearance of the apostle Paul, answered with an af-
fectionate guffaw, "I think he was a scrawny shrimp like Melanch-
thon." But when the stripling opened his mouth, he was like the boy
Jesus in the temple. He came as professor of Greek, not of theology,
and without any commitment to Luther; but soon he succumbed to
his spell. His conversion stemmed from no travail of spirit but from
agreement with Luther's interpretation of the apostle Paul. These
were the leaders of the Wittenberg phalanx.

106

THE SAXON HUS

THE GAUNTLET OF ECK

The Goliath of the Philistines who stepped forth to taunt Israel was
a professor from the University of Ingolstadt, John Eck by name.
On the appearance of Luther's theses he had leveled against them an
attack under the title Obelisks, the word used to designate interpola-
tions in Homer. Luther replied with Asterisks. Eck's attack was gall-
ing to Luther because he was an old friend, not a mendicant but a
humanist, not "a perfidious Italian" but a German, and not the least be-
cause he was formidable. Despite his butcher's face and bull's voice
he was a man of prodigious memory, torrential fluency, and uncanny
acumen a professional disputant who would post to Vienna or Bolog-
na to debate the works of the Trinity, the substance of angels, or the
contract of usury. Particularly exasperating was his propensity for
clothing the opprobrious with plausibility and driving an opponent to
incriminating conclusions.

Eck succeeded in inducing, not his own institution, but the
University of Leipzig to enter the lists as the challenger of

Wittenberg. Thereby old jeal-
ousies were brought into align-
ment with the new conflict, be-
cause Wittenberg and Leipzig
represented the rival sections of
electoral and ducal Saxony.
Eck approached the patron of
Leipzig, Duke George the
Bearded all the Saxon princes
were bearded, but George left
it to the others to be known as
the Wise, the Steadfast, and the
Magnanimous. He agreed that
Eck should debate at Leipzig
with Carlstadt, who in Luther's
defense had already launched
at Eck a virulent attack. But Eck had no mind to fence with the sec-
ond. He openly baited Luther by challenging his alleged assertions

107

JOHN ECK

HERE I STAND

that the Roman Church in the days of Constantine was not above the
others, and that the occupant of the see of Peter had not always been
recognized as the successor of Peter and the vicar of Christ in other
words, that the papacy was of recent and therefore of human origin.
Luther retorted:

Let it be understood that when I say the authority of the Roman
pontiff rests on a human decree I am not counseling disobedience. But
we cannot admit that all the sheep of Christ were committed to Peter.
What, then, was given to Paul? When Christ said to Peter, "Feed my
sheep," he did not mean, did he, that no one else can feed them without
Peter's permission? Nor can I agree that the Roman pontiffs cannot err
or that they alone can interpret Scripture. The papal decretal by a new
grammar turns the words of Christ, "Thou art Peter" into "Thou art the
primate." By the decretals the gospel is extinguished. I can hardly restrain
myself against the most impious and perverse blasphemy of this decretal.

Plainly the debate was between Eck and Luther, but to bring a
man stigmatized by the pope as a "son of iniquity" out into the open
in a public debate under the auspices of the orthodox University of
Leipzig was daring. The bishop of the region interposed a prohibition.
But Duke George rallied. He was later to become Luther's most im-
placable opponent, but at the moment he really wanted to know
whether

As soon as the coin in the coffer rings,
The soul from purgatory springs.

He reminded the bishop: "Disputations have been allowed from
ancient rimes, even concerning the Holy Trinity. What good is a
soldier if he is not allowed to fight, a sheep dog if he may not bark,
and a theologian if he may not debate? Better spend money to sup-
port old women who can knit than theologians who cannot discuss."
Duke George had his way. Luther was given a safe conduct to de-
bate at Leipzig. "If that isn't the very devil!" commented Tetzel
from his enforced retirement.

Luther set himself to prepare for the debate. Since he had asserted

108

THE SAXON HUS

that only in the decretals of the previous four hundred years could
the claims of papal primacy be established, he must devote himself
to a study of the decretals. As he worked, his conclusions grew ever
more radical. To a friend he wrote in February:

Eck is fomenting new wars against me. He may yet drive me to a
serious attack upon the Romanists. So far I have been merely trifling.

In March, Luther confided to Spalatin:

I am sending Eck's letters in which he already boasts of having won the
Olympic. I am studying the papal decretals for my debate. I whisper this
in your ear, "I do not know whether the pope is Antichrist or his apos-
de, so does he in his decretals corrupt and crucify Christ, that is, the
truth."

The reference to Antichrist was ominous. Luther w r as to find it
easier to convince men that the pope was Antichrist than that the
just shall live by faith. The suspicion which Luther did not yet dare
breathe in the open links him unwittingly with the medieval sectaries
who had revived and transformed the theme of Antichrist, a figure in-
vented by the Jew T s in their captivity to derive comfort from calamity
on the ground that the coming of Messiah is retarded by the machina-
tions of an Anti-Messiah, whose raging must reach a peak before
the Saviour should come. The gloomiest picture of the present thus
became the most encouraging for the future. The book of Revela-
tion made of the Anti-Messiah an Antichrist and added the details
that before the end two witnesses must testify and suffer martyrdom.
Then would appear Michael the Archangel and a figure with eyes of
flame upon a white horse to cast the beast into the abyss. How the
theme was handled in Luther's day is graphically shown in a wood-
cut from the Nurnberg Chronicle. Below on the left a very plausible
Antichrist beguiles the people, while on the right the two witnesses
from a pulpit instruct the throng. The hillock in the center is the
Mount of Olives, from which Christ ascended into heaven and from
which Antichrist is to be cast into hell. At the top Michael smites
with his sword.

109

Antichrist at the top is smitten by Michael and dragged by devils
toward hell. The hillock is the Mount of Olives, -from 'which
Christ ascended into heaven and from which Antichrist is cast
down. In the foreground at the left Antichrist with a devil speaking
into his ear is beguiling the people. On the right the two witnesses
give their testimony.

THE SAXON HUS

The theme became very popular in the late Middle Ages among
the Fraticelli, Wycliffites, and Hussites, who identified the popes
with the Antichrist soon to be overthrown. Luther was unwittingly
in line with these sectaries, with one significant difference, however.
Whereas they identified particular popes, because of their evil lives,
with Antichrist, Luther held that every pope was Antichrist even
though personally exemplary, because Antichrist is collective: an in-
stitution, the papacy, a system which corrupts the truth of Christ.
That was why Luther could repeatedly address Leo X in terms of
personal respect only a week or so after blasting him as Antichrist.
But all this was yet to come. On the eve of the Leipzig debate Luther
was frightened by his own thoughts. To one who had been so devoted
to the Holy Father as the vicar of Christ the very suggestion that he
might be, after all, the great opponent of Christ was ghastly. At the
same time the thought was comforting, for the doom of Antichrist
was sure. If Luther should fall like the two witnesses, his assailant
would early be demolished by the hand of God. It was no longer a
fight merely with men, but against the principalities and the powers
and the world ruler of this darkness in the heavenly places.

THE LEIPZIG DEBATE

The debate w r as held in Leipzig in the month of July. Eck came
early and strode in a chasuble in the Corpus Christi procession. The
Wittenbergers arrived a few days later, Luther, Carlstadt, Melanch-
thon, and other doctors with two hundred students armed with
battle-axes. Eck was provided by the town council with a bodyguard
of seventy-six men to protect him day and night from the Witten-
bergers and the Bohemians whom he believed to be among them.
Morning and evening a guard marched with streaming banners to
fife and drum, and stationed themselves at the castle gate. The debate
had been scheduled to be held in the aula of the university; but so
great was the concourse of abbots, counts, Knights of the Golden
Fleece, learned and unlearned, that Duke George placed at their dis-
posal the auditorium of the castle. Chairs and benches were decorated
with tapestries, those of the Wittenbergers with the emblem of St.

HERE I STAND

Martin and Eck's with the insigne of the dragon killer, St. George.

On the opening day the assembly attended mass at six in the morn-
ing in St. Thomas Church. The liturgy was sung by a choir of twelve
voices under the leadership of George Rhaw, later to be the printer
of Luther's music at Wittenberg. The assembly then transferred it-
self to the castle. The session was opened with a Latin address of two
hours by Duke George's secretary on the proper mode of conducting
a theological discussion with decorum. "A grand address," said Duke
George, "though I marvel that theologians should need such advice."
Then the choir rendered the Veni, Sancte Spiritus while the town
piper blew lustily. By then it was dinnertime. Duke George had an
eye for the delicacies of the table. To Eck he sent a deer, to Carlstadt
a roe, and wine all round.

In the afternoon began the preliminary skirmish over the rules of
the tournament. The first question was whether to have stenographers.
Eck said no, because taking them into account would chill the pas-
sionate heat of the debate. "The truth might fare better at a lower
temperature,'* commented Melanchthon. Eck lost. The next question
was whether to have judges. Luther said no. Frederick was arranging
to have his case heard by the Archbishop of Trier, and he did not wish
at this juncture to give the appearance of interjecting a rival plan. But
Duke George was insistent. Luther lost. The universities of Erfurt
and Paris were chosen. This was a reversion to the method several
times previously proposed for the handling of his case. When Paris
accepted, Luther demanded that the entire faculty be invited and not
merely the theologians, whom he had come to distrust. "Why then,"
blurted Eck, "don't you refer the case to shoemakers and tailors?"
The third question was whether to admit any books to the arena. Eck
said no. Carlstadt, he charged, on the opening days lugged in tomes
and read the audience to sleep. The Leipzigers in particular had to be
awakened for dinner. Carlstadt accused Eck of wishing to befuddle
the audience by a torrent of erudition. Carlstadt lost. By common
consent the notes of the debate were not to be published until after
the judges had submitted their verdict. The discussion proper then
began.

112

THE SAXON HUS

An eyewitness has left us a description of the contestants.

Martin is of middle height, emaciated from care and study, so that
you can almost count his bones through his skin. He is in the vigor of
manhood and has a clear, penetrating voice. He is learned and has the
Scripture at his fingers 1 ends. He knows Greek and Hebrew sufficiently
to judge of the interpretations. A perfect forest of words and ideas
stands at his command. He is affable and friendly, in no sense dour or
arrogant. He is equal to anything. In company he is vivacious, jocose,
always cheerful and gay no matter how hard his adversaries press him.
Everyone chides him for the fault of being a little too insolent in his
reproaches and more caustic than is prudent for an innovator in religion
or becoming to a theologian. Much the same can be said of Carlstadt,
though in a lesser degree. He is smaller than Luther, with a complexion
of smoked herring. His voice is thick and unpleasant. He is slower in
memory and quicker in anger. Eck is a heavy, square-set fellow with a
full German voice supported by a hefty chest. He would make a
tragedian or town crier, but his voice is rather rough than clear. His
eyes and mouth and his whole face remind one more of a butcher than
a theologian.

THE LEIPZIG DEBATE
"3

HERE I STAND

After Carlstadt and Eck had wrestled for a week over the deprav-
ity of man, Luther entered to discuss the antiquity of the papal and
the Roman primacy, together with the question whether it was of
human or divine institution. "What does it all matter," inquired
Duke George, "whether the pope is by divine right or by human
right? He remains the pope just the same/' "Perfectly right," said
Luther, who insisted that by denying the divine origin of the papacy
he was not counseling a withdrawal of obedience. But Eck saw more
clearlv than Luther the subversiveness of his assertions. The claim of
the pope to unquestioning obedience rests on the belief that his office
is divinely instituted. Luther revealed how lightly after all he esteemed
the office when he exclaimed, "Even if there were ten popes or a
thousand popes there would be no schism. The unity of Christendom
could be preserved under numerous heads just as the separated na-
tions under different sovereigns dwell in concord."

"I marvel," sniffed Eck, "that the Reverend Father should forget
the everlasting dissension of the English and the French, the inveterate
hatred of the French for the Spaniards, and all the Christian blood
spilled over the Kingdom of Naples. As for me, I confess one faith,
one Lord Jesus Christ, and I venerate the Roman pontiff as Christ's

vicar."

But to prove that Luther's views were subversive was not to prove
that they were false. The contestants had to come to grips with history.
Eck asserted that the primacy of the Roman see and the Roman bishop
as the successor of Peter went back to the very earliest days of the
Church. By way of proof he introduced letters ascribed to a bishop of
Rome in the first century affirming, "The Holy Roman and Apostolic
Church obtained the primacy not from the apostles but from ouar
Lord and Saviour himself, and it enjoys pre-eminence of power above
all of the churches and the whole flock of Christian people"; and
again, "The sacerdotal order commenced in the period of the New
Testament directly after our Lord Christ, when to Peter was commit-
ted the pontificate previously exercised in the Church by Christ him-
self." Both of these statements had been incorporated into the canon
law.

114

THE SAXON HUS

"I impugn these decretals," cried Luther, "No one will ever per-
suade me that the holy pope and martyr said that." Luther was right.
They are today universally recognized by Catholic authorities as be-
longing to the spurious Isidorian decretals. Luther had done an ex-
cellent piece of historical criticism, and without the help of Lorenzo
Valla, whose work he had not yet seen. Luther pointed out that ac-
tually in the early centuries bishops beyond Rome were not confirmed
by nor subject to Rome, and the Greeks never accepted the Roman
primacy. Surely the saints of the Greek Church were not on that ac-
count to be regarded as damned.

THE ENDORSEMENT OF HUS

"I see," said Eck, "that you are following the damned and pestifer-
ous errors of John Wyclif , who said, 'It is not necessary for salvation
to believe that the Roman Church is above all others.' And you are
espousing the pestilent errors of John Hus, who claimed that Peter
neither was nor is the head of the Holy Catholic Church."

"I repulse the charge of Bohemianism," roared Luther. "I have
never approved of their schism. Even though they had divine right
on their side, they ought not to have withdrawn from the Church,
because the highest divine right is unity and charity."

Eck was driving Luther onto ground especially treacherous at
Leipzig, because Bohemia was near by, and within living memory the
Bohemian Hussites, the followers of John Hus, burned for heresy
at Constance, had invaded and ravaged the Saxon lands. The assem-
bly took time out for lunch. Luther availed himself of the interlude
to go to the university library and read the acts of the Council of Con-
stance, by which Hus had been condemned. To his amazement he
discovered among the reproved articles the following: "The one
holy universal Church is the company of the predestined,", and again,
"The universal Holy Church is one, as the number of the elect is one."
The second of these statements he recognized as deriving directly from
St. Augustine. When the assembly reconvened at two o'clock, Luther
declared, "Among the articles of John Hus, I find many which are

HERE I STAND

plainly Christian and evangelical, which the universal Church cannot
condemn." Duke George at these words jabbed his elbows into his
ribs and muttered audibly, "The plague!" His mind conjured up the
Hussite hordes ravaging the Saxon lands. Eck had scored.

Luther continued. "As for the article of Hus that 'it is not necessary
for salvation to believe the Roman Church superior to all others'
I do not care whether this comes from Wyclif or from Hus. I know
that innumerable Greeks have been saved though they never heard
this article. It is not in the power of the Roman pontiff or of the
Inquisition to construct new articles of faith. No believing Christian
can be coerced beyond holy writ. By divine law we are forbidden
to believe anything which is not established by divine Scripture or
manifest revelation. One of the canon lawyers has said that the opinion
of a single private man has more weight than that of a Roman pontiff
or an ecclesiastical council if grounded on a better authority or
reason. I cannot believe that the Council of Constance would con-
demn these propositions of Hus. Perhaps this section in the acts has
been interpolated."

"They are recorded," stated Eck, "in the reliable history of Jerome
of Croatia, and their authenticity has never been impugned by the
Hussites."

"Even so," replied Luther, "the council did not say that all the
articles of Hus were heretical. It said that 'some were heretical, some
erroneous, some blasphemous, some presumptuous, some seditious,
and some offensive to pious ears respectively.' You should differen-
tiate and tell us which were which."

'Whichever they were," retorted Eck, "none of them was called
most Christian and evangelical; and if you defend them, then you are
heretical, erroneous, blasphemous, presumptuous, seditious, and of-
fensive to pious ears respectively."

"Let me talk German," demanded Luther. "I am being misunder-
stood by the people. I assert that a council has sometimes erred and
may sometimes err. Nor has a council authority to establish new ar-
ticles of faith. A council cannot make divine right out of that which

116

THE SAXON HUS

by nature is not divine right. Councils have contradicted each other,
for the recent Lateran Council has reversed the claim of the councils
of Constance and Basel that a council is above a pope. A simple lay-
man armed with Scripture is to be believed above a pope or a coun-
cil without it. As for the pope's decretal on indulgences I say that
neither the Church nor the pope can establish articles of faith. These
must come from Scripture. For the sake of Scripture we should re-
ject pope and councils."

"But this," said Eck, "is the Bohemian virus, to attach more weight
to one's own interpretation of Scripture than to that of the popes
and councils, the doctors and the universities. When Brother Luther
says that this is the true meaning of the text, the pope and councils
say, 'No, the brother has not understood it correctly.' Then I will
take the council and let the brother go. Otherwise all the heresies will
be renewed. They have all appealed to Scripture and have believed
their interpretation to be correct, and have claimed that the popes
and the councils were mistaken, as Luther now does. It is rancid to
say that those gathered in a council, being men, are able to err. This
is horrible, that the Reverend Father against the holy Council of
Constance and the consensus of all Christians does not fear to call
certain articles of Hus and Wyclif most Christian and evangelical. I
tell you, Reverend Father, if you reject the Council of Constance, if
you say a council, legitimately called, errs and has erred, be then
to me as a Gentile and a publican."

Luther answered, "If you won't hold me for a Christian, at least
listen to my reasons and authorities as you would to a Turk and in-
fidel."

Eck did. They went on to discuss purgatory. Eck cited the fa-
mous passage from II Maccabees 12:45, "Wherefore he made the pro-
pitiation for them that had died, that they might be released from
their sin." Luther objected that the book of II Maccabees belongs
to the Apocrypha and not to the canonical Old Testament, and is de-
void of authority. This was the third time during the debate that he had
impugned the relevance of the documentary buttresses of papal claims.

117

LUTHER AND Hus ADMINISTER THE BREAD AND WINE TO THE
HOUSE OF SAXONY

First he had denied the genuineness of papal decretals of the first cen-
tury, and he was right. Next he questioned the acts of the Council
of Constance, and he was wrong. This time he rejected the authority
of the Old Testament Apocrypha, which is, of course, a matter of
judgment.

Then they took up indulgences, and there was scarcely any de-
bate. Eck declared that if Luther had not assailed the papal primacy,

118

THE SAXON HUS

their differences could easily have been composed. On the subject of
penance, however, Eck kept pressing Luther with the query, "Are
you the only one that knows anything? Except for you is all the
Church in error?"

"I answer," replied Luther, "that God once spoke through the
mouth of an ass. I will tell you straight what I think. 1 am a Christian
theologian; and I am bound, not only to assert, but to defend the
truth with my blood and death. I want to believe freely and be a slave
to the authority of no one, whether council, university, or pope. I
will confidently confess what appears to me to be true, whether it
has been asserted by a Catholic or a heretic, whether it has been ap-
proved or reproved by a council."

The debate lasted eighteen days and "might have gone forever,"
said a contemporary, "had not Duke George intervened." He had
not learned much about what happens when the coin in the coffer
rings, and he needed the assembly hall for the entertainment of the
Margrave of Brandenburg, on his way home from the imperial elec-
tion. Both sides continued the controversy in a pamphlet war. The
agreement to wait for the judgment of the universities before pub-
lishing the notes was not observed, because Erfurt never reported at
all, and Paris not for two years.

Before leaving the debate a minor incident is worth recording
because it is so revealing of the coarseness and insensitivity of that
whole generation. Duke George had a one-eyed court fool. A comic
interlude in the disputation was staged when Eck and Luther debated
whether this fool should be allowed a wife, Luther pro and Eck con.
Eck was so opprobrious that the fool took offense; and whenever sub-
sequently Eck entered the hall, the fool made grimaces. Eck retaliated
by mimicking the blind eye, at which the fool ripped out a volley of
bitter profanity. The audience roared.

After the debate Eck came upon a new fagot for Luther's pyre.
"At any rate," he crowed, "no one is hailing me as the Saxon Hus."
Two letters to Luther had been intercepted, from John Paduska and
Wenzel Rozdalowski, Hussites of Prague, in which they said, "What

119

HERE I STAND

Hus was once in Bohemia you, Martin, are in Saxony. Stand firm."
When these letters did reach Luther, they were accompanied by a
copy of Hus's work On the Church. "I agree now," said Luther,
"with more articles of Hus than I did at Leipzig." By February, 1520,
he was ready to say, "We are all Hussites without knowing it." By
that time Eck was in Rome informing the pope that the son of iniquity
was also the Saxon Hus.

I2O

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE GERMAN HERCULES

N THE early years of the Reform a cartoon
appeared portraying Luther as "the German
Hercules." The pope is suspended in derision
from his nose. Beneath his hand cowers the
inquisitor Hochstraten, and about him sprawl
the scholastic theologians. The caption reveals
that Luther had become a national figure. Such
prominence came to him only after the Leip-
zig debate. Why the debate should of itself have so contributed to his
reputation is puzzling. He had said very little at Leipzig which he
had not said before, and the partial endorsement of Hus might rather
have brought opprobrium than acclaim. Perhaps the very fact that
an insurgent heretic had been allowed to debate at all was what at-
tracted public notice.

A more important factor, however, may have been the dissemination
of Luther's writings. John Froben, that hardy printer of Basel, had
collected and brought out in a single edition the Ninety-Five Theses,
the Resolutions, the Answer to Prierias, the sermon On Penitence,
and the sermon On the Eucharist. In February, 1519, he was able to
report to Luther that only ten copies were left, and that no issue
from his press had ever been so quickly exhausted. The copies had
gone not only to Germany but also to other lands, making of Luther
not only a national but also an international figure. Six hundred had
been sent to France and to Spain, others to Brabant and England.
Zwingli, the reformer of Switzerland, ordered several hundred in

121

From a cartoon attributed to Holbein and assigned to the year 1522.
The pope is suspended from Luther's nose. Jakob von Hochstraten, the
inquisitor, is under his hand. Among the vanquished are St. Thomas,
Duns Scotus, Robert Holcot, William of Occam, Nicholas of Lyra,
Aristotle, and Peter Lombard in the immediate foreground with the
title of his Sentences upside down. The devil disguised as a monk is
fleeing in the background.

THE GERMAN HERCULES

order that a colporteur on horseback might circulate them among the
people. Even from Rome came a letter to Luther written by a former
fellow student, informing him that disciples at the peril of their lives
were spreading his tracts under the shadow of the Vatican. He de-
served a statue as the father of his country.

Such acclaim speedily made Luther the head of a movement which
has come to be known as the Reformation. As it took on shape, it was
bound to come into relation with the two other great movements of
the day, the Renaissance and nationalism.

The Renaissance was a many-sided phenomenon in which a central
place was occupied by the ideal commonly called Humanism. It was
basically an attitude to life, the view that the proper interest of man-
kind is man, who should bring every area of the earth within his com-
pass, every domain of knowledge within his ken, and every discipline
of life within his rational control. War should be reduced to strategy,
politics to diplomacy, art to perspective, and business to bookkeeping.
The individual should seek to comprise within his grasp all the exploits
and all the skills of which man is capable. The uomo unfoersale, the
universal man, should be courtier, politician, explorer, artist, scientist,
financier, and quite possibly divine as well. The literature and lan-
guages of classical antiquity were pursued with avidity as a part of the
quest for universal knowledge, and because the Hellenic attitude to
life had been similar.

This program entailed no overt breach with the Church, since the
secularized popes of the Renaissance became its patrons, and because a
synthesis between the classical and the Christian had already been
achieved by St. Augustine. At the same time a menace to Christianity
was implicit in the movement because it was centered on man, because
the quest for truth in any quarter might lead to relativity, and because
the philosophies of antiquity had no place for the distinctive tenets
of Christianity: the Incarnation and the Cross.

Yet only one overt clash occurred between the Humanists and the
Church. The issue was over freedom of scholarship, and the scene was
Germany. Here a fanatical Jewish convert, Pfeiferkorn by name,
sought to have all the Hebrew books destroyed. He was resisted by

123

HERE I STAND

the great German Hebraist, Reuchlin, the great-uncle of Melanchthon.
The obscurantists enlisted the aid of the inquisitor Jacob von Hoch-
straten, who in the cartoon lies beneath Luther's hand, and of Sylvester
Prierias as the prosecutor. The upshot was a compromise. Reuchlin was
permitted to continue his teaching, though saddled with the costs of
the trial. Essentially he had won.

At several points Humanism and the Reformation could form an
alliance. Both demanded the right of free investigation. The Humanists
included the Bible and the biblical languages in their program of the
revival of antiquity, and Luther's battle for the right understanding
of Paul appeared to them and to Luther himself as a continuation
of the Reuchlin affair. The opponents were the same, Hochstraten
and Prierias; and the aim was the same, unimpeded inquiry. The
Humanist of Niirnberg, Willibald Pirkheimer, lampooned Eck by
portraying him as unable to secure a doctor in the Humanist cities
of Augsburg and Niirnberg and under the necessity, therefore,
of turning to Leipzig, the scene of his recent "triumph" over Luther.
The message was sent by a witch who, to make her goat mount the
air, pronounced the magic words Tartshoh Nerokreffefp, which
in reverse give the names of the principals in the Reuchlin case,
Pfefferkor(e)n and Ho(c)hstrat(en).

Luther's exposure of the spuriousness of papal documents appeared
to the Humanists as to him to be entirely on a par with Lorenzo
Valla's demonstration that the Donation of Constantine was a forgery.
For different reasons Humanism as well as the Reformation attacked
indulgences. What the one called blasphemy the other ridiculed as
silly superstition.

The deepest affinity appeared at that point where Renaissance
man was not sure of himself, when he began to wonder whether his
valor might not be thwarted by the goddess Fortuna or whether his
destiny had not already been determined by the stars. Here was
Luther's problem of God the capricious and God the adverse.
Renaissance man, confronted by this enigma and having no deep
religion of his own, was commonly disposed to find solace less in

124

THE GERMAN HERCULES

Luther's stupefying irrationalities than in the venerable authority
of the Church.

But reactions were diverse. Many early admirers of Luther, like
Pirkheimer, recoiled and made their peace with Rome. Three ex-
amples well illustrate the varied courses taken by others: Erasmus
passed from discriminating support of Luther to querulous opposition;
Melanchthon became the most devoted and the most disconcerting
of colleagues; Diirer might have become the artist of the Reforma-
tion had not death intervened not too long after his crisis of the
spirit.

THE HUMANISTS: ERASMUS

Erasmus was closer to Luther than many another figure of the
Renaissance because he was so Christian. The major portion of his
literary labors was devoted, not to the classics, but to the New
Testament and the Fathers. His ideal, like that of Luther, was to
revive the Christian consciousness of Europe through the dissemina-
tion of the sacred writings, and to that end Erasmus first made avail-
able in print the New Testament in the original Greek. From the
press of Froben in 1516 was issued a handsome volume, the Greek
type reminiscent of manuscripts, the text accompanied by a literal
translation and illumined by annotations. The volume reached Wit-
tenberg as Luther was lecturing on the ninth chapter of Romans,
and thereafter became his working tool. From the accompanying
translation he learned the inaccuracy of the Vulgate rendering of
"do penance" instead of "be penitent." Erasmus throughout his life
continued to improve the tools of biblical scholarship. Luther prized
his efforts and in his lectures on Galatians in 1519 declared that he
would have been happier to have waited for a commentary from the
s. The first letter of Luther to Erasmus was adulatory.

The prince of the Humanists was called "Our delight and our hope.
Who has not learned from him?" In the years 1517-1519 Luther
was so sensible of his affinity with the Humanists as to adopt their fad
of Hellenizing vernacular names. He called himself Eleutherius,
"the free man.

125

HERE I STAND

Luther and Erasmus did have much in common. Both insisted that
the Church of their day had relapsed into the Judaistic legalism
castigated by the apostle Paul. Christianity, said Erasmus, has been
made to consist not in loving one's neighbor but in abstaining from
butter and cheese during Lent. What are pilgrimages, he demanded,
but outward feats, often at the expense of family responsibility?
What good are indulgences to those who do not mend their ways?
The costly votive offerings which bedeck the tomb of St. Thomas
at Canterbury might better be devoted to the charity dear to the
saint. Those who never in their lives endeavored to imitate St. Francis
desire to die in his cowl. Erasmus scoffed at those who to forfend
the fiends trusted to a garment incapable of killing lice.

Both men had a quarrel with the pope, Luther because the pontiffs
imperiled the salvation of souls, Erasmus because they fostered ex-
ternal ceremonies and impeded at times free investigation. Erasmus
went out of his way to interpolate in new editions of his works
passages which could scarcely be interpreted other than as abetting
Luther. The Annotations on the Neiv Testament in the edition of
1519 introduced this passage:

By how many human regulations has the sacrament of penitence and
confession been impeded? The bolt of excommunication is ever in readi-
ness. The sacred authority of the Roman pontiff is so abused by absolu-
tions, dispensations, and the like that the godly cannot see it without a
sigh. Aristotle is so in vogue that there is scarcely time in the churches
to interpret the gospel.

Again, the edition of the Ratio Theologiae in 1520 inserted this
interpolation:

There are those who, not content with the observance of confession
as a rite of the Church, superimpose the dogma that it was instituted
not merely by the apostles but by Christ himself, nor will they suffer
one sacrament to be added or subtracted from the number of the seven
although they are perfectly willing to commit to one man the power to
abolish purgatory. Some assert that the universal body of the Church
has been contracted into a single Roman pontiff, who cannot err on

126

THE GERMAN HERCULES

faith and morals, thus ascribing to the pope more than he claims for
himself, though they do not hesitate to dispute his judgment if he inter-
feres with their purses or their prospects. Is not this to open the door to
tyranny in case such power were wielded by an impious and pestilent
man? The same may be said of vows, tithes, restitutions, remissions, and
confessions by which the simple and superstitious are beguiled.

During the years after the attack on indulgences and before the
assault on the sacraments Erasmus and Luther appeared to con-
temporaries to be preaching so nearly the same gospel that the first
apology for Luther issued in the German tongue and composed in
1519 by the Humanist secretary of Niirnberg, Lazarus Spengler,
lauded him as the emancipator from rosaries, psalters, pilgrimages,
holy water, confession, food and fast la\vs, the misuse of the ban, and
the pomp of indulgences. Erasmus could have said every word of
that.

But there were differences; and the most fundamental was that
Erasmus was after all a man of the Renaissance, desirous of bringing
religion itself within the compass of man's understanding. He sought
to do so, not like the scholastics by rearing an imposing edifice of
rationally integrated theology, but rather by relegating to the judg-
ment day the discussion of difficult points and couching Christian
teaching in terms simple enough to be understood by the Aztecs,
for whom his devotional tracts were translated. His patron saint
was ever the penitent thief because he was saved with so little
theology.

For another reason also Erasmus was diffident of unreserved sup-
port to Luther. Erasmus was nostalgic for the vanishing unities of
Europe. His dream was that Christian Humanism might serve as a
check upon nationalism. In dedicating his commentary on the four
Gospels to four sovereigns of the new national states Henry of
England, Francis of France, Charles of Spain, and Ferdinand of
Austria he voiced the hope that as their names were linked with the
evangelists, so might their hearts be welded by the evangel. The
threat of division and war implicit in the Reformation frightened him.

Most decisive of all was his own inner need. That simple philosophy

127

HERE I STAND

of Christ which he so vaunted did not allay ultimate doubts, and that
very program of scholarship which he trusted to redeem the world
was not immune to wistful scoffing. Why inflict upon oneself pallor,
invalidism, sore eyes, and premature age in the making of books when
perchance wisdom lies with babes? He who could so query the utility
of his life's endeavor needed anchorageif not with Luther, then
with Rome.

Such a man simply could not give Luther unqualified endorsement
without a violation of his own integrity. Erasmus chose his course
with circumspection and held to it with more tenacity and courage
than are usually credited to him. He would defend the man rather
than the opinions. If he endorsed an idea, it would be as an idea and
not as Luther's. He would champion the right of the man to speak
and to be heard. Erasmus pretended even not to know w r hat Luther
was saying. There had been no time, he affirmed, to read Luther's
books, save perhaps a few lines of the Latin works, and of the German
nothing at all, through ignorance of the languagethough two letters
of Erasmus to Frederick the Wise in German are extant. After such
disclaimers he w r ould then over and over again betray acquaintance
even with the German works. But his point was sound enough. He
was confining the defense to questions of civil and religious liberty.
Luther was a man of irreproachable life. He was ready to submit
to correction. He had asked for impartial judges. He should be ac-
corded a hearing, and a real hearing, to determine whether his inter-
pretation of Scripture was sound. The battle was for freedom of in-
vestigation. Even if Luther was mistaken, he should be corrected
fraternally and not by bolts from Rome. Erasmus was by conviction
a neutral in an age intolerant of neutrality.

MELANCHTHON AND DURER

Others among the Humanists went over to Luther unreservedly,
among them Melanchthon, who as a Humanist scholar had been con-
vinced that Luther correctly interpreted the apostle Paul. Melanchthon
therefore became the colleague and the ally. Yet he continued to
occupy a position at once so mediating and so ambiguous as to pro-

128

DURER'S U MELANCOLIA"

THE GERMAN HERCULES

roke questioning to this day whether he was the defender or the
perverter of Luther's gospel. The fact that to the end Melanchthon
preserved the unbroken friendship of Erasmus would not of itself
be particularly significant were it not that he was ever ready to place
upon Luther's teaching an alien nuance. After Luther's death Me-
lanchthon translated the Augsburg Confession into Greek for the
patriarch at Constantinople and in so doing actually transmuted
Luther's teaching of justification by faith into the Greek concept
of the deification of man through sacramental union with the incor-
ruptible Christ. Humanism was a dubious ally.

One wonders whether Luther was not better understood by that
German Humanist who in his early years was the typical Renaissance
figure. The artist Albrecht Diirer was a fine example of the uomo
universale, experimenting with all techniques and seeking to compre-
hend all mysteries in esoteric symbolism; given sometimes to a touch
of levity, as in the "Madonna of the Parrot"; subject also to profound
disquiet over the futility of all human endeavor. Those exuberant
horsemen of the Renaissance reined up before the chasms of destiny.
Their plight is poignantly displayed in Diirer's Melancolia. There sits
a winged woman of high intelligence in torpid idleness amid all the
tools and symbols of man's highest skills. Unused about her lie the
compass of the draftsman, the scales of the chemist, the plane of the
carpenter, the inkwell of the author; unused at her belt the keys of
power, the purse of wealth; unused beside her the ladder of con-
struction. The perfect sphere and the chiseled rhomboid inspire
no new endeavor. Above her head the sands in the hourglass sink,
and the calendar recalls that man's days are as the weaver's shuttle.
The bell above is ready to toll. Yet in sable gloom she broods, because
the issues of destiny strive in the celestial sphere. In the sky the rain-
bow arches, sign of the covenant sworn by God to Noah, never to
bring again the waters upon the earth; but within the rainbow glim-
mers a comet, portent of impending disaster. Beside Melancolia,
perched upon a millstone, sits a scribbling cherub alone active because
insouciant of the forces at play. Is the point again, as with Erasmus,
that wisdom lies with the simplicity of childhood, and man might

129

HERE I STAND

better lay aside his skills until the gods have decided the issues of
the day?

What a parallel have we here in quite other terms to Luther's
agonizing quest for the ultimate meaning of life! His language was
different; his symbols were different; but the Renaissance could
encompass a shift of symbols. When Diirer heard that man is saved
by faith, he comprehended that the comet had been drawn into the
rainbow, and desired with God's help to see Martin Luther and to
engrave his portrait "as a lasting memorial of the Christian man who
has helped me out of great anxiety." Thereafter Diirer's art abandoned
the secular for the evangelical. From "scintillating splendor" he passed
to a "forbidding yet strangely impassioned austerity."

THE NATIONALISTS: HUTTEN AND SICKINGEN

The second great movement to relate itself to the Reformation was
German nationalism. The movement was itself inchoate in Luther's
day because Germany was retarded in national unification as compared
with Spain, France, and England. Germany had no centralized
government. The Holy Roman Empire no more than approximated
a German national state because it was at once too large, since any
European prince was eligible to the highest office, and too small,

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LUTHER AND HUTTEN AS COMPANIONS IN ARMS
ISO

THE GERMAN HERCULES

HUTTEN AND LCTHER BOWLING
AGAINST THE POPE

because actually the Hapsburg dynasty was dominant. Germany was
segmented into small and overlapping jurisdictions of princes and
bishops. The free cities twinkled in the murky way of entangling

alliances. The knights were a
restive class seeking to arrest
the waning of their power, and
the peasants were likewise
restive because desirous of a
political role commensurate
with their economic impor-
tance. No government, and no
class, was able to weld Ger-
many into one. Dismembered
and retarded, she was derided
by the Italians and treated by
the papacy as a private cow.
Resentment against Rome was
more intense than in countries
where national governments curbed papal exploitation.

The representatives of German nationalism who for several years
in some measure aif ected Luther's career were Ulrich von Hutten and
Franz von Sickingen. Hutten was himself both a knight and a
Humanist, fond of parading both in armor and laurel. He illustrates
again the diversities of Humanism, which could be international
in Erasmus and national in him. Hutten did much to create the con-
cept of German nationalism and to construct the picture of the ideal
German, who should repel the enemies of the fatherland and erect a
culture able to vie with the Italian.

The first enemy to be repulsed was the Church, responsible so
often for the division and the mulcting of Germany. Hutten wielded'
the pen of the Humanist to blast the curia with the most virulent
invective. In a tract called The Roman Trinity he catalogued in a
crescendo of triplets all the sins of Rome: "Three things are sold in
Rome: Christ, the priesthood, and women. Three things are hateful
to Rome: a general council, the reformation of the church, and the

HERE I STAND

opening of German eyes. Three ills I pray for Rome: pestilence,
famine, and war. This be my trinity."

The man who wrote this did not at first applaud Luther. In the
opening stages of the skirmish with Eck, Hutten looked on the con-
troversy as a squabble of monks and rejoiced that they would devour
each other, but after the Leipzig debate he perceived that Luther's
words had the ring of his own. Luther, too, resented the fleecing of
Germany, Italian chicanery and superciliousness. Luther wished
that St. Peter's might lie in ashes rather than that Germany should
be despoiled. Hutten's picture of the romantic German could be

THE EBERNBURG
132

THE GERMAN HERCULES

enriched by Luther's concept of a mystical depth in the German
soul exceeding that of other peoples. In 1516 Luther had discovered
an anonymous manuscript emanating from the Friends of God and
had published it under the title of A German Theology, declaring in
the preface that he had learned from it more than from any writing
save the Bible and the works of St. Augustine. These words imply
no narrow nationalism, for St. Augustine was a Latin, but certainly
Luther meant that the Germans should be rated above those by whom
they were despised. The similarity between Hutten and Luther be-
came all the more marked when Hutten grew evangelical and shifted
his idiom from Athens to Galilee.

The practical question for Hutten was how to implement his pro-
gram for the emancipation of Germany. He looked first to Emperor
Maximilian to curb the Church and consolidate the nation, but Maxi-
milian died. Next Hutten hoped that Albert of Mainz, as the primate

of Germany, might be induced to head a genuinely national church,

< ' & ^ '

but Albert owed too much to Rome.

One class alone in Germany responded to Hutten's pleas, and that
was his own, the knights. Among them the most outstanding figure
was Franz von Sickingen, who did so much to effect the imperial
election by throwing his troops around Frankfurt. Sickingen was
trying to obviate the extinction of his class by giving to Germany
a system of justice after the manner of Robin Hood. He announced
himself as the vindicator of the oppressed, and since his troops lived
off the land, he was always seeking more oppressed to vindicate.
Hutten saw a chance to enlist him for the vindication alike of Germany
and Luther. During the warless winter Hutten established himself at
Sickingen's castle called the Ebernburg, and there the poet laureate
of Germany read to the illiterate swordsman from the German works
of the Wittenberg prophet. Sickingen's foot and fist stamped assent,
as he resolved to champion the poor and the sufferers for the
gospel/ Popular pamphlets began to picture him as the vindicator
of the peasants and of Martin Luther. In one of these manifestoes a
peasant, having paid half of his fine to the Church, cannot produce
the remainder. Sickingen advises him that he should not have paid

133

HERE I STAND

the first half and cites the word of Christ to the disciples to take
neither scrip nor purse. The peasant inquires where these words
are to be found, and Sickingen replies, "In Matthew 10, also in
Mark 6, and Luke 9 and 10."

"Sir Knight," exclaims the astonished peasant, "how did you
learn so much Scripture?"

Sickingen answers that he learned from Luther's books as read
to him by Hutten at the Ebernburg.

The picture of Sickingen as the vindicator of the oppressed was not
altogether fantastic. He did permit himself to be enlisted by Hutten
to embark on a minor crusade for Humanism and the Reform.
Reuchlin was thereby relieved of his fine, and fugitives for the gospel
were harbored at the Ebernburg. Among them was that young
Dominican, Martin Bucer, who had been so enthusiastic about Luther
at the Heidelberg conference and now, having abandoned his own
cowl, had fled to the gentlemen of the greenwood tree. Luther was
made to know that he, too, would be welcome. What he replied we
do not know, but we can infer his answer from the response to a
similar overture on the part of a knight who informed him that,
should the elector fail, one hundred knights could be mustered for his
protection, so long as he was not confuted by irreproachable judges.
To such offers Luther was noncommittal. "I do not despise them,"
he confided to Spalatin, "but I will not make use of them unless
Christ, my protector, be willing, who has perhaps inspired the knight."

But Luther was ready to utilize the letters he had received for
diplomatic purposes, and instructed Spalatin if it was not improper
to show them to Cardinal Riario. Let the curia know that if by their
fulminations he was expelled from Saxony, he would not go to Bo-
hemia but would find an asylum in Germany itself, where he might
be more obnoxious than when under the surveillance of the prince
and fully occupied with the duties of teaching. The mood of
the letter was truculent. "For me the die is cast," he said. "I
despise alike Roman fury and Roman favor. I will not be reconciled
nor communicate with them. They damn and burn my books. Unless

134

THE GERMAN HERCULES

I am unable to get hold of a fire, I will publicly burn the whole canon
law."

In August, 1520, Luther intimated that because he had been
delivered by these knights from the fear of men he would attack
the papacy as Antichrist. But he had already done that; and while
the assurance of protection undoubtedly heartened and emboldened
him, the source of his courage was not to be found in a sense of
immunity. One of his friends was fearful that Luther might retreat
before the impending danger. He answered:

You ask how I am getting on. I do not know. Satan was never so
furious against me. I can say this, that I have never sought goods, honor,
and glory, and I am not cast down by the hostility of the masses. In fact,
the more they rage the more I am filled with the spirit. But, and this may
surprise you, I am scarcely able to resist the smallest wave of inner
despair, and that is why the least tremor of this kind expels the greatest
of the other sort. You need not fear that I shall desert the standards.

The most intrepid revolutionary is the one who has a fear greater
than anything his opponents can inflict upon him. Luther, who had
so trembled before the face of God, had no fear before the face
of man.

As the issue became more plainly drawn, it was clear that he would
have no violence either for himself or for the gospel To Spalatin
he wrote in January, 1521:

You see what Hutten asks. I am not willing to fight for the gospel
with bloodshed. In this sense I have written to him. The world is con-
quered by the Word, and by the Word the Church is served and rebuilt.
As Antichrist arose without the hand of man, so without the hand of
man will he fall.

135

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE WILD BOAR
IN THE VINEYARD

ECAUSE Luther relied at long last on the arm
of the Lord outstretched from heaven, he was
not for that reason remiss in doing what might
be done on earth. The delay of a year and a
half in his trial gave him an opportunity to
elaborate his views and to declare his findings.
His theology, as we have seen, was already
mature before the breach with Rome as to
the essential nature of God and Christ and as to the way of salvation.
On these points Luther had been brought to see that he was in some
respects at variance with the Church. But he had not as yet thought
through the practical implications of his theology for the theory of
the Church, her rites, her composition, and her relation to society.
Neither had he addressed himself to the problems of moral conduct.
The interlude during which he was unmolested, from the conference
with Cajetan in October of 1519 to the arrival of the papal bull in
October of 1520, provided the opportunity. Luther availed himself
feverishly' of the respite, not knowing of course how long it would
last. During the summer of 1520 he delivered to the printer a sheaf of
tracts which are still often referred to as his primary works: The Ser-
mon on Good Works in May, The Papacy at Rome in June, and The
Address to the German Nobility in August, The Babylonian Captivity
in September, and The Freedom of the Christian Man in November.

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THE WILD BOAR IN THE VINEYARD

The latter three pertain more immediately to the controversy and
will alone engage us for the moment.

The most radical of them all in the eyes of contemporaries was the
one dealing with the sacraments, entitled The Babylonian Captivity,
with reference to the enslavement of the sacraments by the Church.
This assault on Catholic teaching was more devastating than anything
that had preceded; and when Erasmus read the tract, he ejaculated,
"The breach is irreparable." The reason was that the pretensions of
the Roman Catholic Church rest so completely upon the sacraments
as the exclusive channels of grace and upon the prerogatives of the
clergy, by whom the sacraments are exclusively administered. If sac-
ramentalism is undercut, then sacerdotalism is bound to fall. Luther
with one stroke reduced the number of the sacraments from seven to
two. Confirmation, marriage, ordination, penance, and extreme unc-
tion were eliminated. The Lord's Supper and baptism alone remained.
The principle which dictated this reduction was that a sacrament
must have been directly instituted by Christ and must be distinctively
Christian.

The removal of confirmation and extreme unction was not of tre-
mendous import save that it diminished the control of the Church over
youth and death. The elimination of penance was much more serious
because this is the rite of the forgiveness of sins. Luther in this instance
did not abolish it utterly. Of the three ingredients of penance he recog-
nized of course the need for contrition and looked upon confession
as useful, provided it was not institutionalized. The drastic point was
with regard to absolution, which he said is only a declaration by man
of what God has decreed in heaven and not a ratification by God of
what man has ruled on earth.

The repudiation of ordination as a sacrament demolished the caste
system of clericalism and provided a sound basis for the priesthood of
all believers, since according to Luther ordination is simply a rite of
the Church by which a minister is installed to discharge a particular
office. He receives no indelible character, is not exempt from the
jurisdiction of the civil courts, and is not empowered by ordination
to perform the other sacraments. At this point what the priest does any

137

HERE I STAND

Christian may do, if commissioned by the congregation, because all
Christians are priests. The fabrication of ordination as a sacrament

was designed to engender implacable discord whereby the clergy and the
laity should be separated farther than heaven and earth, to the incredible
injury of baptismal grace and to the confusion of evangelical fellowship.
This is the source of that detestable tyranny over the laity by the clergy
who, relying on the external anointing of their hands, the tonsure and the
vestments, not only exalt themselves above lay Christians, anointed by
the Holy Spirit, but even regard them as dogs, unworthy to be included
with them in the Church. . . . Here Christian brotherhood has expired
and shepherds have become wolves. All of us who have been baptized
are priests without distinction, but those whom we call priests are min-
isters, chosen from among us that they should do all things in our name
and their priesthood is nothing but a ministry. The sacrament of ordina-
tion, therefore, can be nothing other than a certain rite of choosing a
preacher in the Church.

But Luther's rejection of the five sacraments might even have been
tolerated had it not been for the radical transformation which he ef-
fected in the two which he retained. From his view of baptism he
was to infer a repudiation of monasticism on the ground that it is not
a second baptism, and no vow should ever be taken beyond the bap-
tismal vow.

Most serious of all was Luther's reduction of the mass to the Lord's
Supper. The mass is central for the entire Roman Catholic system be-
cause the mass is believed to be a repetition of the Incarnation and
the Crucifixion. When the bread and wine are transubstantiated, God
again becomes flesh and Christ again dies upon the altar. This wonder
can be performed only by priests empowered through ordination. In-
asmuch as this means of grace is administered exclusively by their
hands, they occupy a unique place within the Church; and because
the Church is the custodian of the body of Christ, she occupies a
unique place in society.

Luther did not attack the mass in order to undermine the priests.
His concerns were always primarily religious and only incidentally ec-
clesiastical or sociological. His first insistence was that the sacrament

138

THE WILD BOAR IN THE VINEYARD

of the mass must be not magical but mystical, not the performance
of a rite but the experience of a presence. This point was one of
several discussed with Cajetan at the interview. The cardinal com-
plained of Luther's view that the efficacy of the sacrament depends
upon the faith of the recipient. The teaching of the Church is that
the sacraments cannot be impaired by any human weakness, be it the
unworthiness of the performer or the indifference of the receiver.
The sacrament operates by virtue of a power within itself ex opere
operate. In Luther's eyes such a view made the sacrament mechanical
and magical. He, too, had no mind to subject it to human frailty and
would not concede that he had done so by positing the necessity of
faith, since faith is itself a gift of God, but this faith is given by God
when, where, and to whom he will and even without the sacrament
is efficacious; whereas the reverse is not true, that the sacrament is of
efficacy without faith. "I may be wrong on indulgences," declared
Luther, "but as to the need for faith in the sacraments I will die before
I will recant." This insistence upon faith diminished the role of the
priest who may place a wafer in the mouth but cannot engender faith
in the heart.

The second point made by Luther was that the priest is not in a
position to do that which the Church claims in the celebration of the
mass. He does not "make God," and he does not "sacrifice Christ."
The simplest way of negating this view would have been to say that
God is not present and Christ is not sacrificed, but Luther was ready
to affirm only the latter. Christ is not sacrificed because his sacrifice
was made once and for all upon the cross, but God is present in the
elements because Christ, being God, declared, "This is my body."
The repetition of these words by the priest, however, does not trans-
form the bread and wine into the body and blood of God, as the
Catholic Church holds. The view called transubstantiation was that
the elements retain their accidents of shape, taste, color, and so on, but
lose their substance, for which is substituted the substance of God.
Luther rejected this position less on rational than on biblical grounds.
Both Erasmus and Melanchthon before him had pointed out that
the concept of substance is not biblical but a scholastic sophistication.

139

HERE I STAND

For that reason Luther was averse to its use at all, and his own view
should not be called consubstantiation. The sacrament for him was not
a chunk of God fallen like a meteorite from heaven. God does not
need to fall from heaven because he is everywhere present throughout
his creation as a sustaining and animating force, and Christ as God is
likewise universal, but his presence is hid from human eyes. For that
reason God has chosen to declare himself unto mankind at three loci
of revelation. The first is Christ, in whom the Word was made flesh.
The second is Scripture, where the Word uttered is recorded. The
third is the sacrament, in which the Word is manifest in food and
drink. The sacrament does not conjure up God as the witch of
Endor but reveals him where he is.

To the degree that the powers of the priest were diminished, his
prerogatives also were curtailed. In Catholic practice one of the dis-
tinctions between the clergy and the laity is that only the priest
drinks the wine at the mass. The restriction arose out of the fear that
the laity in clumsiness might spill some of the blood of God. Luther
felt no less reverence for the sacrament, but he would not safeguard
it at the expense of a caste system within the Church. Despite the risk,
the cup should be given to all believers. This pronouncement in his
day had an uncommon ring of radicalism because the chalice for the
laity was the cry of the Bohemian Hussites. They justified their prac-
tice on the ground that Christ said, "Drink ye all of it." Catholic in-
terpreters explain these words as addresse^ only to the apostles, who
were all priests. Luther agreed, but retorted that all believers are
priests.

THE SACRAMENTS AND THE THEORY OF THE CHURCH

Such a view was fraught with far-reaching consequences for the
theory of the Church, and Luther's own view of the Church was deriv-
ative from his theory of the sacraments. His deductions, however,
were not clear-cut in this area, because his view of the Lord's Supper
pointed in one direction and his view of baptism in another. That is
why he could be at once to a degree the / father of the congregational-

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THE WILD BOAR IN THE VINEYARD

ism of the Anabaptists and of the territorial church of the later Lu-
therans.

His view of the Lord's Supper made for the gathered church of
convinced believers only, because he declared that the sacrament de-
pends for its efficacy upon the faith of the recipient. That must of
necessity make it highly individual because faith is individual. Every
soul, insisted Luther, stands in naked confrontation before its Maker.
No one can die in the place of another; everyone must wrestle with
the pangs of death for himself alone. 'Then I shall not be with you,
nor you with me. Everyone must answer for himself." Similarly, "The
mass is a divine promise w r hich can help no one, be applied for no one,
intercede for no one, and be communicated to none save him only who
believes with a faith of his own. Who can accept or apply for another
the promise of God which requires faith of each individually?"

Here we are introduced to the very core of Luther's individualism.
It is not the individualism of the Renaissance, seeking the fulfillment
of the individual's capacities; it is not the individualism of the late
scholastics, who on metaphysical grounds declared that reality consists
only of individuals, and that aggregates like Church and state are not
entities but simply the sum of their components. Luther was not con-
cerned to philosophize about the structure of Church and state; his
insistence was simply that every man must answer for himself to God.
That was the extent of his individualism. The faith requisite for the
sacrament must be one's own. From such a theory the obvious in-
ference is that the Church should consist only of those possessed of a
warm personal faith; and since the number of such persons is never
large, the Church would have to be a comparatively small conventicle.
Luther not infrequently spoke precisely as if this were his meaning.
Especially in his earlier lectures he had delineated a view of the Church
as a remnant because the elect are few. This must be so, he held, be-
cause the Word of God goes counter to all the desires of the natural
man, abasing pride, crushing arrogance, and leaving all human pre-
tensions in dust and ashes. Such a work is unpalatable, and few will
receive it. Those who do will be stones rejected by the builders. De-
rision and persecution will be their lot. Every Abel is bound to have

141

HERE I STAND

his Cain, and every Christ his Caiaphas. Therefore the true Church
will be despised and rejected of men and will lie hidden in the midst
of the world. These words of Luther might readily issue in the sub-
stitution for the Catholic monastery of the segregated Protestant com-
munity.

But Luther was not willing to take this road because the sacrament
of baptism pointed for him in another direction. He could readily
enough have accommodated baptism to the preceding view, had he
been willing, like the Anabaptists, to regard baptism as the outward
sign of an inner experience of regeneration appropriate only to adults
and not to infants. But this he would not do. Luther stood with the
Catholic Church on the score of infant baptism because children must
be snatched at birth from the power of Satan. But what then becomes
of his formula that the efficacy of the sacrament depends upon the
faith of the recipient? He strove hard to retain it by the figment of an
implicit faith in the baby comparable to the faith of a man in sleep.
But again Luther would shift from the faith of the child to the faith
of the sponsor by which the infant is undergirded. Birth for him was
not so isolated as death. One cannot die for another, but one can in
a sense be initiated for another into a Christian community. For that
reason baptism rather than the Lord's Supper is the sacrament which
links the Church to society. It is the sociological sacrament. For the
medieval community every child outside the ghetto was by birth a
citizen and by baptism a Christian. Regardless of personal conviction
the same persons constituted the state and the Church. An alliance of
the two institutions was thus natural. Here was a basis for a Christian
society. The greatness and the tragedy of Luther was that he could
never relinquish either the individualism of the eucharistic cup or
the corporateness of the baptismal font. He would have been a troubled
spirit in a tranquil age.

PROSECUTION RESUMED

But his age was not tranquil. Rome had not forgotten him. The
lifting of the pressure was merely opportunist; and as the time ap-
proached when the Most Catholic Emperor would come from Spaia

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THE WILD BOAR IN THE VINEYARD

to Germany, the papacy was prepared to resume the prosecution.
Even before the publication of the assault on the sacraments, which
in the eyes of Erasmus made the breach irreparable, Luther had said
quite enough to warrant drastic action. The assertions of the indul-
gence controversy had been augmented by the more devastating at-
tack upon the divine origin and rule of the papacy at the Leipzig de-
bate. His offense was so glaring that a member of the curia deprecated
waiting until the arrival of the emperor. Then came Eck to Rome,
armed not only with the notes on Leipzig but also with condemna-
tions of Luther's teaching by the universities of Cologne and Louvain.
When Erfurt had declined and Paris had failed to report on the dis-
putation between Luther and Eck, these trvvo other universities stepped
unsolicited into the breach. The judgment of Cologne, dominated by
the Dominicans, was more severe. Louvain was slightly tinctured with
Erasmianism. Both were agreed in condemning Luther's views on
human depravity, penance, purgatory, and indulgences. Louvain was
silent with regard to the attack on the papacy, whereas Cologne com-
plained of heretical notions as to the primacy and derogation from
the power of the keys.

Luther retorted that neither cited against him any proof from the
Scripture.

Why do we not abolish the gospel and turn instead to them? Strange
that handworkers give sounder judgments than theologians! How seri-
ously should one take those who condemned Reuchlin? If they burn
my books, I will repeat what I have said. In this I am so bold that for it
I will suffer death. When Christ was filled with scorn against the Phari-
sees and Paul was outraged by the blindness of the Athenians, what, I
beg you, shall I do?

Nothing further of the prosecution is on record until March, when
the attempt was resumed to suppress Luther quietly through the Au-
gustinian order. The general wrote to Staupitz:

The order, never previously suspected of heresy, is becoming odious.
We beg you in the bonds of love to do your utmost to restrain Luther

143

HERE I STAND

from speaking against the Holy Roman Church and her indulgences.
Urge him to stop writing. Let him save our order from infamy.

Staupitz extricated himself by resigning as vicar.

Another approach was made through Frederick the Wise. Cardinal
Riario, lately pardoned for his complicity in an attempt on the life
of the pope, wrote to Frederick:

Most illustrious noble lord and brother, when I recall the splendor of
your house and the devotion ever displayed by your progenitors and
yourself toward the Holy See, I think it the part of friendship to write
to you concerning the common good of Christendom and the everlast-
ing honor of yourself. I am sure you are not ignorant of the rancor,
contempt, and license with which Martin Luther rails against the Roman
pontiff and the whole curia. Wherefore I exhort you, bring this man
to reject his error. You can if you will; with just one little pebble the
puny David killed the mighty Goliath.

Frederick replied that the case had been referred to his most dear
friend, the Archbishop of Trier, Elector of the Holy Roman Em-
pire, Richard of Greiff enklau.

In May dallying ended. Four meetings of the consistory were held,
on May 21, 23, 26, and June 1. The pope on the evening of the twen-
ty-second retired to his hunting lodge at Magliana, a soliti piaceri.
The cardinals, the canonists, and the theologians carried on. There
may have been some forty in attendance. Eck was the only German.
The three great monastic orders were represented, the Dominicans,
the Franciscans, and the Augustinians. No longer could one speak of
a monk's squabble. Luther's own general was there, not to mention
his old opponents Prierias and Cajetan. Three questions were to be
settled: what to do with Luther's opinions, what to do with his
books, and what to do with his person. Lively differences of opinion
ensued. Some in the first session questioned the expediency of issuing
a bull at all in view of the exacerbated state of Germany. The theo-
logians were for condemning Luther outright. The canonists con-
tended that he should be given a hearing like Adam, for even though
God knew him to be guilty he gave him an opportunity to defend him-

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THE WILD BOAR IN THE VINEYARD

self when he said, "Where art them?" A compromise was reached
whereby Luther was not to have a hearing but should be given sixty
days in which to make his submission,

With regard to his teaching there were debates, though by whom
and about what can only be surmised. Reports at second or third
hand suggest the differences within the consistory. The Italian
Cardinal Accolti is said to have called Tetzel a "porcaccio" and to
have given Prierias a rabbuffo for composing in three days a reply
to Luther which might better have taken three months. Cajetan is
reported to have sniffed on Eck's arrival in Rome, "Who let in that
beast?" Spanish Cardinal Carvajal, a conciliarist, is said to have op-
posed vehemently the action against Luther. In the end unanimity
was attained for the condemnation of forty-one articles. The pre-
vious strictures df Louvain and Cologne were combined and amplified.

THE BULL "EXSURGE"

Anyone acquainted with Luther's mature position will feel that
the bull was exceedingly sparse in its reproof. Luther's views on the
mass were condemned only at the point of the cup to the laity. No
other of the seven sacraments received notice, save penance. There
was nothing about monastic vows, only a disavowal of Luther's de-
sire that princes and prelates might suppress the sacks of the mendi-
cants. There was nothing about the priesthood of all believersf The
articles centered on Luther's disparagement of human capacity even
after baptism, on his derogation from the power of the pope to bind
and loose penalties and sins, from the power of the pope and councils
to declare doctrine, from the primacy of the pope and of the Roman
Church. At one point the condemnation of Luther conflicted with
the recent pronouncement of the pope on indulgences. Luther was
reproved for reserving the remission of penalties imposed by divine
justice to God alone, whereas the pope himself had just declared that
in such cases the treasury of merits could be applied only by way of
intercession, not of jurisdiction. The charge of Bohemianism against
Luther had plainly lodged, because he was condemned on the score of
introducing certain of the articles of John Hus. jpTwo characteristical-

145

0ulfo contra erroies

aOartiniZutbcn

i fequaciimu

THE BULL AGAINST LUTHER

THE WILD BOAR IN THE VINEYARD

ly Erasmian tenets received strictures, that to burn heretics is against
the will of the Spirit and that war against the Turks is resistance to
God's visitation. The forty-one articles were not pronounced uni-
formly heretical but were condemned as "heretical, or scandalous, or
false, or offensive to pious ears, or seductive of simple minds, or re-
pugnant to Catholic truth, respectively." Some suspected at the time
that this formula was adopted because the consistory was not able to
make up its mind which were which, and therefore, like the triumvirs,
proscribed the enemies of each though they might be friends of
the rest. One may doubt, however, whether this was the case, be-
cause the formula was stereotyped and had been used in the condem-
nation of John Hus.

The completed bull was presented to the pope for a preface and
conclusion. In keeping with the surroundings of his hunting lodge at
Magliana he commenced:

Arise, O Lord, and judge thy cause. A wild boar has invaded thy
vineyard. Arise, O Peter, and consider the case of the Holy Roman
Church, the mother of all churches, consecrated by thy blood. Arise, O
Paul, who by thy teaching and death hast and dost illumine the Church.
Arise, all ye saints, and the whole universal Church, whose interpre-
tation of Scripture has been assailed. We can scarcely express our grief
over the ancient heresies which have been revived in Germany. We
are the more downcast because she was always in the forefront of
the war on heresy. Our pastoral office can no longer tolerate the pestif-
erous virus of the following forty-one errors. [They are enumerated.]
We can no longer suffer the serpent to creep through the field of the
Lord. The books of Martin Luther which contain these errors are to be
examined and burned. As for Martin himself, good God, what office of
paternal love have we omitted in order to recall him from his errors?
Have we not offered him a safe conduct and money for the journey?
[Such an offer never reached Luther.] And he has had the temerity to
appeal to a future council although our predecessors, Pius II and Julius II,
subjected such appeals to the penalties of heresy. Now therefore we give
Martin sixty days in which to submit, dating from the time of the pub-
lication of this bull in his district. Anyone who presumes to infringe our
excommunication and anathema will stand under the wrath of Almighty
God and of the apostles Peter and Paul.

Dated on the 15th day of June, 1520.
147

HERE I STAND

This bull is known by its opening words, which are Exsurge Domine.
A few weeks later the pope wrote to Frederick the Wise:

Beloved son, we rejoice that you have never shown any favor to that
son of iniquity, Martin Luther. We do not know whether to credit this
the more to your sagacity or to your piety. This Luther favors the
Bohemians and the Turks, deplores the punishment of heretics, spurns
the writings of the holy doctors, the decrees of the ecumenical councils,
and the ordinances of the Roman pontiffs, and gives credence to the
opinions of none save himself alone, which no heretic before ever pre-
sumed to do. We cannot suffer the scabby sheep longer to infect the
flock. Wherefore we have summoned a conclave of venerable brethren.
The Holy Spirit also was present, for in such cases he is never absent
from our Holy See. We have composed a bull, sealed with lead, in which
out of the innumerable errors of this man we have selected those in which
he perverts the faith, seduces the simple, and relaxes the bonds of obedi-
ence, continence, and humility. The abuses which he has vaunted against
our Holy See we leave to God. We exhort you to induce him to return
to sanity and receive our clemency. If he persists in his madness, take
him captive.

Given under the seal of the Fisherman's ring on the 8th
of July, 1520, and in the eighth year of our pontificate.

THE BULL SEEKS LUTHER

The papal bull took three months to find Luther, but there were
early rumors that it was on the way. Hutten wrote to him on
June 4, 1520:

You are said to be under excommunication. If it be true, how mighty
you are! In you the words of the psalm are fulfilled, "They have con-
demned innocent blood, but the Lord our God will render to them their
iniquity and destroy them in their malice." This is our hope; be this our
faith. There are plots against me also. If they use force, they will be met
with force. I wish they would condemn me. Stand firm. Do not waver.
But why should I admonish you? I will stand by, whatever come. Let us
vindicate the common liberty. Let us liberate the oppressed fatherland.
God will be on our side; and if God is with us, who can be against us?

This was the time when renewed offers came from Sickingen and
from a hundred knights besides. Luther was not unmoved, yet he

148

THE WILD BOAR IN THE VINEYARD

scarcely knew whether to rely on the arm of man or solely on the
Lord. During that summer of 1520, when the papal bull was seeking
him throughout Germany, his mood fluctuated between the incen-
diary and the apocalyptic. In one unguarded outburst he incited to
violence. A new attack by Prierias lashed Luther to rage. In a printed
reply he declared:

It seems to me that if the Romanists are so mad the only remedy re-
maining is for the emperor, the kings, and princes to gird themselves with
force of arms to attack these pests of all the world and fight them, not
with words, but with steel. If we punish thieves with the yoke, high-
waymen with the sword, and heretics with fire, why do we not rather
assault these monsters of perdition, these cardinals, these popes, and the
whole swarm of the Roman Sodom, who corrupt youth and the Church
of God? Why do we not rather assault them with arms and wash our hands
in their blood?

Luther explained afterwards that he really did not mean what the
words imply.

I wrote "/f we burn heretics, why do we not rather attack the pope and
his followers with the sword and wash our hands in their blood?" Since
I do not approve of burning heretics nor of killing any Christian this I
well know does not accord with the gospel I have shown what they
deserve if heretics deserve fire* There is no need to attack you with the
sword.

Despite this disclaimer Luther was never suffered to forget his in-
cendiary blast. It was quoted against him in the Edict of the Diet of
Worms.

The disavowal was genuine. His prevailing mood was expressed
in a letter of October to a minister who was prompted to leave his
post. Luther wrote:

Our warfare is not with flesh and blood, but against spiritual wicked-
ness in the heavenly places, against the world rulers of this darkness. Let
us then stand firm and heed the trumpet of the Lord. Satan is fighting,
not against us, but against Christ in us. We fight the battles of the Lord.
Be strong therefore. If God is for us, who can be against us?

HERE I STAND

You are dismayed because Eck is publishing a most severe bull against
Luther, his books, and his followers. Whatever may happen, I am not
moved, because nothing can happen save in accord with the will of him
who sits upon the heaven directing all* Let not your hearts be troubled.
Your Father knows your need before you ask him. Not a leaf from a
tree falls to the ground without his knowledge. How much less can any
of us fall unless it be his will.

If you have the spirit, do not leave your post, lest another receive
your crown. It is but a little thing that we should die with the Lord, who
in our flesh laid down his life for us. We shall rise with him and abide
with him in eternity. See then that you do not despise your holy calling*
He will come, he will not tarry, who will deliver us from every ill. Fare
well in the Lord Jesus, who comforts and sustains mind and spirit. Amen.

CHAPTER NINE

THE APPEAL TO CAESAR

T ONE point Luther was perfectly clear.
Whoever helped or did not help him, he would
make his testimony.

"For me the die is cast. I despise alike
Roman fury and Roman favor. I will not be
reconciled or communicate with them. Let
them damn and burn my books. I for my
part, unless I cannot find a fire, will publicly

damn and burn the whole canon law."
Neither did Luther neglect his defense. He had appealed in vain to

the pope and in vain to a council. There was one more recourse, the

appeal to the emperor. During the month of August Luther addressed

Charles V in these words:

It is not presumptuous that one who through evangelical truth has
ascended the throne of Divine Majesty should approach the throne of an
earthly prince, nor is it unseemly that an earthly prince, who is the image
of the Heavenly, should stoop to raise up the poor from the dust. Conse-
quently, unworthy and poor though I be, I prostrate myself before your
Imperial Majesty. I have published books which have alienated many,
but I have done so because driven by others, for I would prefer nothing
more than to remain in obscurity* For three years I have sought peace
in vain. I have now but one recourse. I appeal to Caesar. I have no desire
to be defended if I am found to be impious or heretical. One thing I ask,
that neither truth nor error be condemned unheard and unrefuted.

Luther asked of Caesar, however, more than that he should hear a
man. He was also to vindicate a cause. The Church was desperately in

HERE I STAND

need of reform, and the initiative would have to come, as Hutten
contended, from the civil power. A mighty program of reformation
was delineated by Luther in the Address to the Germm Nobility. The
term "nobility" was broadly used to cover the ruling class in Germany,
from the emperor down. But by what right, the modern reader
may well inquire, might Luther call upon them to reform the Church?
The question has more than an antiquarian interest, because some
contend that in this tract Luther broke with his earlier view of the
Church as a persecuted remnant and laid instead the basis for a
church allied with and subservient to the state. Luther adduced three
grounds for his appeal. The first was simply that the magistrate was
the magistrate, ordained of God to punish evildoers. All that Luther
demanded of the magistrate as magistrate was that he should hale the
clergy before the civil courts, protect citizens against ecclesiastical
extortion, and vindicate the state in the exercise of civil functions
from clerical interference. This was the sense in which Luther often
asserted that no one in a thousand years had so championed the
civil state as he. The theocratic pretensions of the Church were to
be repulsed.

The Address to the German Nobility, however, goes far beyond a
mere circumscribing of the Church to her proper sphere. Luther was
much less concerned for the emancipation of the state than for the puri-
fication of the Church. The stripping away of temporal power and
inordinate wealth was designed to emancipate the Church from world-
ly cares that she might better perform her spiritual functions. The
basis of the right of the magistrate to undertake this reform is stated
in Luther's second reason, namely, "The temporal authorities are bap-
tized with the same baptism as we." This is the language of the Chris-
tian society, built upon the sociological sacrament administered to
every babe born into the community. In such a society, Church and
state are mutually responsible for the support and correction of each
other.

In a third passage Luther gave the additional ground, that the magis-
trates were fellow Christians sharing in the priesthood of all believers,

152

3n torn CtoffHirfinro

TITLE PAGE OF THE "ADDRESS TO THE GERMAN NOBHJTY"

HERE I STAND

from which some modern historians have inferred that Luther would
concede to the magistrate the role of Church reformer only if he were
himself a convinced Christian, and then only in an emergency. But no
such qualification is stated in this tract. The priesthood of all believers
itself was made to rest upon the lower grade of faith implicit in the
baptized infant. Luther's whole attitude to the reformatory role of
the magistrate is essentially medieval. What sets it off from so many
other attempts at the redress of grievances is its deeply religious tone.
The complaints of Germany were combined with the reform of the
Church, and the civil power itself was directed to rely less on the
arm of flesh than upon the hand of the Lord.

The program began with religious premises. Three walls of Rome
must tumble down like the walls of Jericho. The first was that the
spiritual power is above the temporal. This claim Luther countered
with the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. "We are all alike
Christians and have baptism, faith, the Spirit, and all things alike. If a
priest is killed, a land is laid under an interdict. Why not in the case of
a peasant? Whence comes this great distinction between those who are
called Christians? " The second wall was that the pope alone might in-
terpret Scripture. This assertion was met, not so much by the vindica-
tion of the rights of Humanist scholarship against papal incompetence,
as by the claims of lay Christianity to understand the niind of Christ.
"Balaam's ass was wiser than the prophet himself. If God then spoke
by an ass against a prophet, why should he not be able even now to
speak by a righteous man against the pope?" The third wall was that
the pope alone could call a council. Here again the priesthood of all
believers gave the right to anyone in an emergency, but peculiarly to
the civil power because of its strategic position.

Then follow all the proposals for the reforms to be instituted by a
council. The papacy should return to apostolic simplicity, with no
more triple crown and no toe kissing. The pope should not receive the
sacrament seated, proffered to him by a kneeling cardinal through a
golden reed, but should stand up like any other "stinking sinner.'* The
cardinals should be reduced in number. The temporal possessions and

154

THE APPEAL TO CAESAR

claims of the Church should be abandoned that the pope might devote
himself only to spiritual concerns. The income of the Church should
be curtailed no more annates, fees, indulgences, golden years, res-
ervations, crusading taxes, and all the rest of the tricks by which the
"drunken Germans" were despoiled. Litigation in Church courts in-
volving Germans should be tried in Germany under a German
primate. This suggestion looked in the direction of a national church.
For Bohemia it was definitely recommended.

The proposals with regard to monasticism and clerical marriage
went beyond anything Luther had said previously. The mendicants
should be relieved of hearing confession and preaching. The number
of orders should be reduced, and there should be no irrevocable vows.
The clergy should be permitted to marry because they need house-
keepers, and to place man and woman together under such circum-
stances is like setting straw beside fire and expecting it not to bum.

Miscellaneous recommendations called for the reduction of Church
festivals and a curb on pilgrimages. Saints should be left to canonize
themselves. The state should inaugurate legal reform and undertake
sumptuary legislation. This program was comprehensive and for the
most part would evoke hearty applause in Germany.

Underlying it all was a deep indignation against the corruption of
the Church. Again and again the pope was shamed by a comparison
with Christ. This theme went back through Hus to Wyclif. An il-
lustrated work in Bohemian on the disparity of Christ and the pope
was in the library of Frederick the Wise. A similar work was later
issued in Wittenberg with annotations by Melanchthon and woodcuts
by Cranach. The idea was already present in the Address to the Ger-
man Nobility, where reference was made to Christ on foot, the pope
in a palanquin with a retinue of three or four thousand mule drivers;
Christ washing the disciples* feet, the pope having his feet kissed;
Christ enjoining keeping faith even with an enemy, the pope declaring
that no faith is to be kept with him who has no faith, and that prom-
ises to heretics are not binding. Still worse, constraint against them
is employed. "But heretics should be vanquished with books, not with

IS5

HERE I STAND

burnings. O Christ my Lord, look down. Let the day of thy judgment
break and destroy the devil's nest at Rome! "

On the left Christ is washing the disciples' feet. On the right
Antichrist, the pope, is having his toes kissed by monarch*.

PUBLICATION OF THE BULL

In the meantime the bull Exsurge Domine was being executed at
Rome. Luther's books were burned in the Piazza Navona. The bull
was printed, notarized, and sealed for wider dissemination. The task
of its publication in the north was committed to two men who were
named papal nuncios and special inquisitors for the purpose. One of
them was John Eck. The other, Jerome Aleander, was a distinguished
Humanist, master of three languages Latin, Greek, and Hebrew
a former rector of the University of Paris. He had some acquaintance
with German affairs through his youth in the Low Countries. His
irregularities in private morals gave no offense in the days of the un-
reformed papacy. The field was divided between the two men, partly
along geographical lines. Eck was to take the east, Franconia and
Bavaria. Aleander should cover the Low Countries and the Rhine.

156

THE APPEAL TO CAESAR

There was a further division of function in that Aleander should ad-
dress himself to the emperor and his court and to the high magnates,
lay and clerical, whereas Eck should go rather to the bishops and the
universities. The two men were enjoined to act in perfect accord.
Aleander's instructions told him first of all to deliver the bull "To our
beloved son Charles, Holy Roman Emperor and Catholic King of
Spain." At that moment all parties were looking to Charles. He was
young and had not yet declared himself. The pope expected him to
follow the example of his grandmother, Isabella the Catholic. The
Germans saw in him the heir of his grandfather, Maximilian the Ger-
man. Aleander was advised in case Luther should demand a hearing
before the court of the emperor to reply that the case was being
handled solely by Rome. This is the first suggestion that Luther might
ask to have his case referred to a secular tribunal. The secretary who
composed this memorandum was singularly clairvoyant, because the
instructions were drafted prior to Luther's appeal to Caesar. Eck re-
ceived a secret commission, unknown to Aleander, permitting the in-
clusion in the condemnation of more names than Luther's, according
to discretion.

Neither man relished his assignment, which each undertook at the
risk of his life. Eck made his task vastly more difficult by adding names
at his indiscretion, six of them: three from Wittenberg, including
Carlstadt; and three from Niirnberg, including Spengler and Pirk-
heimer. He could not have chosen a more inopportune moment to at-
tack the leaders of German Humanism, who were never more united.
Aleander likewise in the Netherlands was confronted with many Lu-
ther sympathizers. There was Erasmus, who said, "The inclemency of
this bull ill comports with the moderation of Leo." And again, "Papal
bulls are weighty, but scholars attach more weight to books with good
arguments drawn from the testimony of divine Scripture, which does
not coerce but instructs." In Antwerp the Marrani, Spaniards and
Portuguese of Jewish extraction, were printing Luther in Spanish. Ger-
man merchants were disseminating his ideas. Albrecht Diirer was exe-
cuting commissions in Antwerp while looking to Luther and Erasmus
to purify the Church. In the Rhine valley there were rumors that

157

HERE I STAND

Sickingen might vindicate Luther, as he had done Reuchlin, by force
of arms.

Eck met with the most unexpected opposition. Duke George held
back on the ground that his locality had not been specifically named.
Frederick the Wise was expected to obstruct, but he did so in the most
disconcerting way by reporting that he had learned from Aleander
that Eck had no authorization to include anyone save Luther. Eck then
was forced to produce his secret instructions. On one ground or an-
other the very bishops held back, some of them for six months, before
publishing the bull. The University of Vienna declined to act with-
out the bishop, and the University of Wittenberg protested the im-
propriety of entrusting the publication of the bull to a party in the
dispute. "The goat should not be permitted to be a gardener, nor
the wolf a shepherd, nor John Eck a papal nuncio." Not only the
University of Wittenberg but even the Duke of Bavaria expressed fear
that publication of the bull would produce disorder. There was some
reason for such concern. At Leipzig, Eck had to hide for his life in a
cloister. At Erfurt, when he had the bull reprinted, the students dubbed
it a "bulloon" and threw all the copies in the river to see whether they
would float. At Torgau it was torn down and besmeared. The only
easy successes were with the bishops of Brandenburg, Meissen, and
Merseburg, who permitted the publication of the bull on September
21, 25, and 29 respectively. Eck, in honor of this triumph, erected a
votive tablet in the church at Ingolstadt: "]ohn Eck, professor or-
dmarws of theology and university chancellor, papal nuncio and apos-
tolic protonotary, having published in accord with the command of
Leo X the bull against Lutheran doctrine in Saxony and Meissen,
erects this tablet in gratitude that he has returned home alive."

Aleander found his task complicated because the bull leaked to
Germany before its publication, and in a form discrepant from his own.
He was well received, however, at the imperial court at Antwerp, and
His Majesty promised to stake his life on the protection of the Church
and the honor of the pope and the Holy See. He was perf ecdy ready
to execute the bull in his hereditary domains, and Aleander was able
therefore to institute an auto-da-fe of Lutheran books at Louvain on

158

THE APPEAL TO CAESAR

October 8. When the fire was started, however, students threw in
works of scholastic theology and a medieval handbook for preachers
entitled Sleep Well. A similar burning took place at Liege on the seven-
teenth. The mendicants and the
conservatives of the university
faculty at Louvain were incited
to make life intolerable for
Erasmus. The Counter Refor-
mation, aided by the imperial
arm, was already begun.

But in the Rhineland it was
different. The emperor there
ruled only by virtue of his elec-
tion. When at Cologne on
November 12 Aleander tried to
have a bonfire, though the
archbishop had given his con-
sent, the executioner refused to
proceed without an express im-
perial mandate. The archbishop
asserted his authority, and the
books were burned. At Mainz
the opposition was more violent. The executioner, before applying
the torch, turned to the assembled onlookers and inquired whether
these books had been legally condemned. When with one voice the
throng boomed back "No! " the executioner stepped down and refused
to act. Aleander appealed to Albert, the archbishop, and secured
from him authorization to destroy a few books on the following
day. The order was carried out on the twenty-ninth of November,
not by the public executioner, but by a gravedigger, and with no
witnesses save a few women who had brought their geese to market.
Aleander was pelted with stones, and he declared that except for
the intervention of the abbot he would not have come off with his
life. His word might be doubted had we no other evidence, for he
magnified his danger to enhance his achievements.

159

FROM TITLE PAGE OF HUTTEK'S
PROTEST "AGAINST THE BURNING
OF LUTHER'S BOOKS AT MATNZ"

HERE I STAND

But in this instance there is independent corroboration. Ulrich
von Hutten came out in verse with an invective both in Latin and
in German:

O God, Luther's books they burn.
Thy godly truth is slain in turn.
Pardon in advance is sold,
And heaven marketed for gold.
The German people is bled white
And is not asked to be contrite.
To Martin Luther wrong is done
O God, be thou our champion.
My goods for him I will not spare,
My Hfe, my blood for him I dare.

On October 10 the bull reached Luther. The following day he
commented to Spalatin:

This bull condemns Christ himself. It summons me not to an audience
but to a recantation. I am going to act on the assumption that it is spurious,
though I think it is genuine. Would that Charles were a man and would
fight for Christ against these Satans. But I am not afraid. God's will be
done. I do not know what the prince should do unless to dissemble. I am
sending you a copy of the bull that you may see the Roman monster. The
faith and the Church are at stake. I rejoice to suffer in so noble a cause.
I am not worthy of so holy a trial. I feel much freer now that I am certain
the pope is Antichrist. Erasmus writes that the imperial court is overrun
with mendicants, and there is no hope from the emperor. I am on the way
to Lichtenburg for a conference with Miltitz. Farewell and pray for me.

The game of obstruction had already begun. Frederick the Wise
played the instructions of Aleander and the commission of Miltitz
against John Eck. Miltitz had never been recalled by the pope and
now said frankly that Eck had no business to publish the bull while
friendly negotiations were still in progress. Frederick resolved to
keep them going, and therefore arranged for a new interview be-
tween Luther and Miltitz, and of course the Archbishop of Trier
was still in the picture as an arbiter. For that reason Luther impugned
the genuineness of the bull on the ground that Rome would not make

160

THE APPEAL TO CAESAR

monkeys of two electors by taking the case out of their hands. "There-
fore I will not believe in the authenticity of this bull until I see the
original lead and wax, string, signature, and seal with my own eyes."
For a time Luther reckoned with the double possibility that the
bull might be either true or false. In that sense he came out with
a vehement assault, apparently at the instance of Spalatin, to whom he
wrote:

It is hard to dissent from all the pontiffs and princes, but there is no
other way to escape hell and the wrath of God. If you had not urged, I
would leave everything to. God and do no more than I have done. I have
put out a reply to the bull in Latin, of which I am sending you a copy*
The German version is in the press. When since the beginning of the
world did Satan ever so rage against God? I am overcome by the magni-
tude of the horrible blasphemies of this bull. I am almost persuaded by
many and weighty arguments that the last day is at the threshold. The
Kingdom of Antichrist begins to fall. I see an insuppressible insurrection
coming out of this bull, which the Roman curia deserves.

AGAINST THE EXECRABLE BULL OF ANTICHRIST

The reply to which he referred was entitled Against the Execrable
Bull of Antichrist. Luther wrote:

I have heard that a bull against me has gone through the whole earth
before it came to me, because being a daughter of darkness it feared the
light of my face. For this reason and also because it condemns manifestly
Christian articles I had my doubts whether it really came from Rome and
was not rather the progeny of that man of lies, dissimulation, errors, and
heresy, that monster John Eck. The suspicion was further increased when
it was said that Eck was the apostle of the bull. Indeed the style and the
spittle all point to Eck. True, it is not impossible that where Eck is the
apostle there one should find the kingdom of Antichrist. Nevertheless
in the meantime I will act as if I thought Leo not responsible, not that I
may honor the Roman name, but because I do not consider myself worthy
to suffer such high things for the truth of God. For who before God
would be happier than Luther if he were condemned from so great and
high a source for such manifest truth? But the cause seeks a worthier
martyr. I with my sins merit other things. But whoever wrote this
bull, he is Antichrist. I protest before God, our Lord Jesus, his sacred

161

HERE I STAND

angels, and the whole world that with my whole heart I dissent from
the damnation of this bull, that I curse and execrate it as sacrilege and
blasphemy of Christ, God's Son and our Lord. This be my recantation,
O bull, thou daughter of bulls.

Having given my testimony I proceed to take up the bull. Peter said
that you should give a reason for the faith that is in you, but this bull
condemns me from its own word without any proof from Scripture,
whereas I back up all my assertions from the Bible. I ask thee, ignorant
Antichrist, dost thou think that with thy naked words thou canst prevail
against the armor of Scripture? Hast thou learned this from Cologne and
Louvain? If this is all it takes, just to say, "I dissent, I deny," what fool,
what ass, what mole, what log could not condemn? Does not thy
meretricious brow blush that with thine inane smoke thou withstandest
the lightning of the divine Word? Why do we not believe the Turks?
Why do we not admit the Jews? Why do we not honor the heretics if
damning is all that it takes? But Luther, who is used to bellum, is not
afraid of bullam. I can distinguish between inane paper and the omnipotent
Word of God.

They show their ignorance and bad conscience by inventing the
adverb "respectively." My articles are called "respectively some heretical,
some erroneous, some scandalous," which is as much as to say, "We don't
know which are which." O meticulous ignorance! I wish to be instructed,
not respectively, but absolutely and certainly. I demand that they show
absolutely, not respectively, distinctly and not confusedly, certainly and
not probably, clearly and riot obscurely, point by point and not in a
lump, just what is heretical. Let them show where I am a heretic, or dry
up their spittle. They say that some articles are heretical, some erroneous,
some scandalous, some offensive. The implication is that those which are
heretical are not erroneous, those which are erroneous are not scandalous,
and those which are scandalous are not offensive. What then is this, to
say that something is not heretical, not scandalous, not false, but yet
is offensive? So then, you impious and insensate papists, write soberly if
you want to write. Whether this bull is by Eck or by the pope, it is the
sum of all impiety, blasphemy, ignorance, impudence, hypocrisy, lying-
in a word, it is Satan and his Antichrist.

Where are you now, most excellent Charles the Emperor, kings, and
Christian princes? You were baptized into the name of Christ, and can
you suffer these Tartar voices of Antichrist? Where are you, bishops?
Where, doctors? Where are you who confess Christ? Woe to all who live
in these times. The wrath of God is coming upon the papists, the enemies

162

THE APPEAL TO CAESAR

of the cross of Christ, that all men should resist them. You then, Leo X,
you cardinals and the rest of you at Rome, I tell you to your faces: "If
this bull has come out in your name, then I will use the power which
has been given me in baptism whereby I became a son of God and co-heir
with Christ, established upon the rock against which the gates of hell
cannot prevail. I call upon you to renounce your diabolical blasphemy
and audacious impiety, and, if you will not, we shall all hold your seat
as possessed and oppressed by Satan, the damned seat of Antichrist, in
the name of Jesus Christ, whom you persecute." But my zeal carries me
away. I am not yet persuaded that the bull is by the pope but rather by
that apostle of impiety, John Eck.

Then follows a discussion of the articles. The tract concludes:

If anyone despise my fraternal warning, I am free from his blood in the
last judgment. It is better that I should die a thousand times than that
I should retract one syllable of the condemned articles. And as they
excommunicated me for the sacrilege of heresy, so I excommunicate
them in the name of the sacred truth of God. Christ will judge whose
excommunication will stand. Amen.

THE FREEDOM OF THE CHRISTIAN MAN

Two weeks after the appearance of this tract another came out so
amazingly different as to make one wonder whether it could be by
the same man, or if by the same author, how he could pretend to any
semblance of sincerity. It was entitled Freedom of the Christian Man
and commenced with a deferential address to Leo X. This little work
was the fruit of the interview with Miltitz, who reverted to his old
principle of mediation by asking Luther to address to the pope a
disclaimer of personal abusiveness and a statement of faith. Luther
could respond in all integrity. He was not fighting a man but a sys-
tem. Within a fortnight he could blast the papacy as Antichrist and
yet address the pope with deference.

Most blessed father, in all the controversies of the past three years I
have ever been mindful of you, and although your adulators have
driven me to appeal to a council in defiance of the futile decrees of your
predecessors, Pius and Julius, I have never suffered myself because of their

163

HERE I STAND

stupid tyranny to hold your Beatitude in despite. To be sure, I have
spoken sharply against impious doctrine, but did not Christ call his
adversaries a generation of vipers, blind guides, and hypocrites? And did
not Paul refer to his opponents as dogs, concision, and sons of the Devil?
Who could have been more biting than the prophets? I contend with
no one about his life, but only concerning the Word of Truth. I look
upon you less as Leo the Lion than as Daniel in the lions' den of Babylon.
You may have three or four learned and excellent cardinals, but what
are they among so many? The Roman curia deserves not you but Satan
himself. What under heaven is more pestilent, hateful, and corrupt? It is
more impious than the Turk. But do not think, Father Leo, that when I
scathe this seat of pestilence I am inveighing against your person. Beware
of the sirens who would make you not simply a man but half a god. You
are a servant of servants. Do not listen to those who say that none can be
Christians without your authority, who make you the lord of heaven,
hell, and purgatory. They err who put you above a council and the uni-
versal Church. They err who make you the sole interpreter of Scripture.
I am sending you a tract as an auspice of peace, that you may see the
sort of thing with which I could and would more fruitfully occupy
myself if your adulators would leave me alone.

Then followed Luther's canticle of the freedom of the Christian
man. If Luther supposed that this letter and tract would mollify the
pope, he was exceedingly naive. The deferential letter itself denied
the primacy of the pope over councils, and the treatise asserted the
priesthood of all believers. The pretense that the attack was directed,
not against the pope, but against the curia is the device commonly
employed by constitutionally-minded revolutionaries who do not
like to admit to themselves that they are rebelling against the head of
a government The English Puritans similarly for some time claimed
that they were not fighting Charles I but only the "Malignants" by
whom he was surrounded. As conflicts continue, such fictions soon
become too transparent to be useful. Luther was early driven to aban-
don the distinction, for the bull had been issued in the name of the
pope and had never been disclaimed from the Vatican. It demanded
recantation. That Luther would never accord. On the twenty-ninth
of November he came out with the Assertion of All the Articles

164

THE APPEAL TO CAESAR

Wrongly Condemned in the Ronzan Bull. The tone may be inferred
from the two following:

No. 18. The proposition condemned was that "indulgences are
the pious defrauding of the faithful." Luther commented:

I was wrong, I admit it, when I said that indulgences were "the pious
defrauding of the faithful." I recant and I say, "Indulgences are the
most impious frauds and imposters of the most rascally pontiffs, by which
they deceive the souls and destroy the goods of the faithful.

No. 29. The proposition condemned was "that certain articles of
John Hus condemned at the Council of Constance are most Christian,
true, and evangelical, which the universal Church cannot condemn."
Luther commented:

I was wrong. I retract the statement that certain articles of John Hus
are evangelical. I say now, "Not some but all the articles of John Hus
were condemned by Antichrist and his apostles in the synagogue of
Satan." And to your face, most holy Vicar of God, I say freely that all
the condemned articles of John Hus are evangelical and Christian, and
yours are downright impious and diabolical.

This came out on the day Luther's books were burned at Cologne.
There were rumors that the next bonfire would be at Leipzig.
The sixty days of grace would
soon expire. The count was
usually reckoned from the day
the citation was actually re-
ceived. The bull had reached
Luther on the tenth of October.
On the tenth of December,
Melanchthon on Luther's be-
half issued an invitation to the
faculty and students of the uni-
versity to assemble at ten o'clock
at the Elster gate, where, in re-
prisal for the burning of Luther's

LUTHER BURNING THE PAPAL BULL

165

HERE I STAND

pious and evangelical books, the impious papal constitutions, the
canon law, and works of scholastic theology would be given to the
flames. Luther himself threw in the papal bull for good measure.
The professors went home, but the students sang the Te Deum and
paraded about the town in a wagon with another bull affixed to a
pole, and an indulgence on the point of a sword. The works of Eck
and other opponents of Luther were cremated.
Luther publicly justified what he had done.

Since they have burned my books, I burn theirs. The canon law was
included because it makes the pope a god on earth. So far I have merely
fooled with this business of the pope. All my articles condemned by
Antichrist are Christian. Seldom has the pope overcome anyone with
Scripture and with reason.

Frederick the Wise undertook to excuse Luther's course to the
emperor. To one of the counselors he wrote:

After I left Cologne, Luther's books were burned, and again at Mainz.
I regret this because Dr. Martin has already protested his readiness to do
everything consistent with the name of Christian, and I have constantly
insisted that he should not be condemned unheard, nor should his books
be burned. If now he has given tit for tat, I hope that His Imperial Majesty
will graciously overlook it.

Frederick had never before gone so far as this. He boasted that in
his whole life he had not exchanged more than twenty words with
Luther. He claimed to pass no judgment on his teachings but to de-
mand only that he be given an impartial hearing. Frederick could
still say that he was not defending Luther's views but merely excus-
ing his act. The ground was not theology but law. Luther's books
had been illegally burned. He ought not, indeed, to have retaliated,
but the emperor should wink at the affront in view of the provoca-
tion. Frederick was saying that a German, subject to a miscarriage of
justice, should be excused for burning not only a papal bull but the
entire canon law, the great legal code which even more than the
civil law in the Middle Ages had provided the legal basis for Euro-
pean civilization.

166

CHAPTER TEN

HERE I STAND

REDERICK was well advised to turn to the
emperor. The case at Rome was settled, and
a formal ban was inevitable. The question was
whether any additional penalty would be in-
flicted by the state. That question the state
itself would have to decide. Obviously Lu-
ther could do no more than preach, teach, and
pray, and wait for others to determine the
disposition to be made of his case.

Six months were required for the answer. That does not seem a
long time in comparison with the four years of dallying on the part
of the Church. Yet one might have supposed that since the emperor
was imbued with the orthodoxy of Spain he would brook no delay.
The emperor was not in the position, however, to do as he pleased.
The pageantry of his coronation did not excuse him from the neces-
sity of appending his signature to the imperial constitution, and two
clauses of that constitution have been supposed by some to have been
inserted by Frederick the Wise in order to safeguard Luther. One
stipulated that no German of any rank should be taken for trial out-
side Germany, and the other that none should be outlawed without
cause and without a hearing. That these provisions were really meant
to protect the rights of a monk accused of heresy is extremely du-
bious, and in no extant document did Frederick or Luther ever appeal
to them. At the same time the emperor was a constitutional monarch;
and whatever his own convictions, he would not find it expedient
to govern Germany by arbitrary fiat.

'167

HERE I STAND

He confronted a divided public opinion. Some were for Luther,
some against, and some in between. Those who were for him were
numerous, powerful, and vocal. Aleander, the papal nuncio in Ger-
many, reported that nine tenths of the Germans cried, "Luther,"
and the other one tenth, "Death to the pope." This was unquestionably
an exaggeration. Yet Luther's following was not contemptible. His
supporters were powerful. Franz von Sickingen from his fortress on
the Ebernburg controlled the Rhine valley and might well prevent
the emperor, who came to Germany without Spanish troops, from
taking action. Luther's supporters were also vocal, and notably Ulrich
von Hutten, who, scorning submission to Rome in order to obviate
excommunication, fulminated from the Ebernburg against the curia
and curdled the blood of Aleander with successive manifestoes. The
bull Exsurge was reprinted with stinging annotations, and in a tract
Hutten portrayed himself as the "Bull Killer." He appealed to the
emperor to shake off the rabble of priests. Threats of violence were
addressed to Albert of Mainz. Aleander, the papal nuncio, was urged
to heed the groans of the German people and to accord a fair trial,
which should not be denied to a parricide. "Do you suppose," de-
manded Hutten, "that through an edict extracted by guile from the

emperor you will be able to
separate Germany from lib-
erty, faith, religion, and
truth? Do you think you can
intimidate us by burning
books? This question will
not be settled by the pen
but by the sword."

The most influential of
Luther's supporters was
Frederick the Wise. He had
gone so far as to excuse
the burning of the papal

bull. At the Diet of Worms
TITLE PAGE OF HUTTEN'S "SATIRE ON - , ._ . - .

THE BULL AGAINST LUTHER'* he permitted Fritz, his court

168

HERE I STAND

fool, to mimic the cardinals. Frederick had refused to be wooed
by the golden rose, the indulgences for the Castle Church at
Wittenberg, and a benefice for his natural son. The most clear-cut
confession of Luther's cause on his part comes to us only at third
hand. Aleander claimed to have heard from Joachim of Branden-
burg that Frederick had said to him, "Our faith has long lacked
this light which Martin has brought to it." The remark must
be discounted because both narrators were eager to smear Fred-
erick with adherence to Luther. The elector himself repeatedly in-
sisted that he was not espousing Dr. Martin's opinions but merely de-
manding a fair hearing. If the f riar was properly heard and condemned,
Frederick would be the first to do his duty against him as a Christian
prince. Yet Frederick's notion of a fair hearing meant that Luther
should be convicted out of the Scriptures. Frederick was often murky
as to the issues; but when clear, he was dogged.

On the opposite side were the papalists, men like Eck who took
their cue from Rome. The curia reiterated pleas to root out the tare,
expel the scabby sheep, cut away the putrid member, and throw over-
board the rocker of the bark of St. Peter. The representative of Rome
throughout the trial was Aleander, whose objective was to have the
case settled arbitrarily by the emperor without consulting the German
estates, which were known to be divided. Above all else Luther should
not receive a hearing before a secular tribunal. He had already been
condemned by the Church, and the laity should simply implement
the Church's decision and not re-examine the grounds of condemna-
tion.

Then there was the middle party, headed personally by Erasmus,
who, despite his statement that the breach was irreparable, did not de-
sist from efforts at mediation and even fathered a memorandum pro-
posing the appointment by the emperor and the kings of England and
Hungary of an impartial tribunal. The Erasmians as a party sensed less
than their leader the depth of the cleavage between Luther and the
Church and between Luther and themselves.

With opinion thus divided delays in settling Luther's case were in-
evitable. The Lutheran party deliberately resorted to filibustering.

169

HERE I STAND

Curiously some of the greatest obstructionists were at the Vatican be-
cause the pope had seen his worst fears realized in the election of
Charles as emperor, and was now disposed to curb his power by sup-
porting France. But whenever a move was made in that direction,
Charles, for all his orthodoxy, intimated that Luther could be used as
a weapon. Even the greatest activists on the scene were less active than
might have been expected* Hutten was restrained by hope, because he
believed that history would inevitably repeat itself and in due time any
German emperor would cksh with the temporal pretensions of the
pope. Beguiled by these expectations he deferred his priests' war until
a fellow Humanist taunted him with emitting only froth. But at the
same time Aleander was intimidated by Hutten's fulminations; and
when the pope sent a bull of excommunication against both Luther
and Hutten, Aleander withheld the publication and sent the bull back
to Rome to have the name of Hutten first expunged. Such communica-
tions of themselves took months, and thus by reason of Aleander's
timidity Luther came actually to be outlawed by the empire before
he had been formally excommunicated by the Church.

A HEABING PROMISED AND RECALLED

Where, how, and by whom his case should be handled was the prob-
lem which faced Charles. A decision on the point was reached on the
fourth of November, 1520, when Charles after his coronation at
Aachen went to confer with "Uncle Frederick," marooned by the
gout at Cologne. All knew that important decisions were pending. The
Lutherans placarded the city with the appeal to Caesar. For the papal-
ists Aleander hastened to interview Frederick the Wise and urged him
to commit the case to the pope. Frederick instead called in Erasmus,
the leader of the moderates, and asked his judgment. Erasmus pursed
his lips. Frederick strained forward for the weighty answer. "Two
crimes Luther has committed," came the verdict. u He has attacked
the crown of the pope and the bellies of the monks." Frederick laughed.

Thus fortified Frederick conferred with the emperor and secured
a promise that Luther should not be condemned without a hearing.
On what grounds Charles was persuaded we do not know, nor what

170

THE DIET OF WORMS AND THE PUBLIC PEACE

HERE I STAND

sort of hearing he had in mind. The University of Wittenberg
promptly pointed to a hearing before the forthcoming diet of the
German nation soon to be assembled at the city of Worms. Frederick
transmitted the proposal to the emperor's counselors and received
from His Majesty a reply dated November 28 and addressed to his
"beloved Uncle Frederick: We are desirous that you should bring
the above-mentioned Luther to the diet to be held at Worms, that
there he may be thoroughly investigated by competent persons, that
no injustice be done nor anything contrary to law." He does not say
what law, nor by whom the investigation should be conducted, nor
whether Luther would be at liberty to defend his views. Luther
should come, that was all. The appeal to Caesar had been heard. This
invitation on the twenty-eighth of November marked an amazing
reversal of policy. The Defender of the Faith, who had been burn-
ing the books, now invited the author of those very books to some
sort of hearing. Had the emperor been won over to the policy of
Erasmus? Had some disquieting political news disposed him for a
moment to bait the pope and cultivate the Germans? Was he fearful
of popular insurrection? His motives elude us. This only we know,
that the invitation was issued.

That was in November, but Luther did not actually appear at the
diet until April of the next year. In the interim the invitation was
rescinded and reissued. All the strife of the parties centered on this
point: Should Luther be permitted to appear before a secular tribunal
to be examined as to the faith? "Never," was the resolve of Aleander.

As for myself, I would gladly confront this Satan, but the authority
of the Holy See should not be prejudiced by subjection to the judgment
of the laity. One who has been condemned by the pope, the cardinals, and
prelates should be heard only in prison. The laity, including the emperor,
are not in a position to review the case. The only competent judge is
the pope. How can the Church be called the ship of Peter if Peter is not
at the helm? How can she be the ark of Noah if Noah is not the captain?
If Luther wants to be heard, he can have a safe conduct to Rome. Or His
Majesty might send him to the inquisitors in Spain. He can perfectly
well recant where he is and then come to the diet to be forgiven. He asks

172

HERE I STAND

for a place which is not suspect. What place to him is not suspect, unless
it be Germany? What judges would he accept unless Hutten and the
poets? Has the Catholic Church been dead for a thousand years to be
revived only by Martin? Has the whole world gone wrong and Martin
only has the eyes to see?

The emperor was impressed. On the seventeenth of December he
rescinded the invitation to bring Luther to the diet. The reason as-
signed was that the sixty days had expired and in consequence if
Luther were to come to Worms the city would find itself under an
interdict* One may doubt whether this was the real reason. The mo-
tives of the emperor for recalling the invitation are as elusive as his
motives for issuing it, for Luther was not yet formally under the
ban; and even if he were, a papal dispensation could be secured.
Charles may have been persuaded by Aleander, irritated by Luther's
burning of the bull, depressed by news from Spain, and desirous of
placating the curia. Whatever his reasons, he might have spared him-
self the onus of a public reversal had he but waited, because Frederick
the Wise declined the invitation on the ground that the case appeared
to be prejudged by the burning of Luther's books, for which he was
sure the emperor was not responsible. Frederick might well entertain a
doubt because on the very day
of the burning at Mainz the em-
peror had issued the invitation
to Luther. Frederick was deter-
mined to drive Charles to a
clarification of his position and
to an assumption of full respon-
sibility.

For that reason the elector in-
quired of Luther whether he
would be willing to come in
case he was invited directly by
the emperor himself. He an-
swered:

173

ALEANDER

HERE I STAND

You ask me what I shall do if I am called by the emperor. I will go even
if I am too sick to stand on my feet. If Caesar calls me, God calls me. If
violence is used, as well it may be, I commend my cause to God. He lives
and reigns who saved the three youths from the fiery furnace of the king
of Babylon, and if He will not save me, my head is worth nothing com-
pared with Christ. This is no time to think of safety. I must take care
that the gospel is not brought into contempt by our fear to confess and
seal our teaching with our blood.

His mood is more fully revealed in letters to Staupitz.

This is not the time to cringe, but to cry aloud when our Lord Jesus
Christ is damned, reviled, and blasphemed. If you exhort me to humility,
I exhort you to pride. The matter is very serious. We see Christ suffer.
If hitherto we ought to have been silent and humble, I ask you whether
now, when the blessed Saviour is mocked, we should not fight for
him. My father, the danger is greater than many think. Now applies the

word of the gospel, "He who
confesses me before men, him
will I confess in the presence of
my father, and he who denies
me before men, him will I
deny." I write this candidly to
you because I am afraid you
hesitate between Christ and the
pope, though they are diamet-
rically contrary. Let us pray
that the Lord Jesus will destroy
the son of perdition with the
breath of his mouth. If you will
not follow, permit me to go. I
am greatly saddened by your
submissiveness. You seem to me
to be a very different Staupitz
from the one who used to
preach grace and the cross. . . . Father, do you remember when we were
at Augsburg you said to me, "Remember, brother, you started this in
the name of the Lord Jesus." I have never forgotten that, and I say it
now to you. I burned the pope's books at first with fear and trembling,
but now I am lighter in heart than I have ever been in my life. They are
so much more pestilent than I supposed.

174

LUTHER WITH A DOVE ABOVE
His HEAD

HERE I STAND
THE EMPEROR ASSUMES RESPONSIBILITY

Aleander, unaware of the new approaches to Luther, thought the
occasion propitious to present an edict which the emperor should issue
without consulting the diet. The emperor answered that he could not
act alone. The Archbishop of Mainz had not yet arrived; and when
he came, he opposed the edict, even though a month earlier he had
himself authorized the burning of Luther's books. The Elector of
Saxony also had not yet arrived. His entry coincided with the Feast
of the Three Kings, and he rode into Worms like one of the Wise
Men bearing gifts for the young emperor, from whom he secured
another reversal of policy. Charles promised to assume responsibility
for Luther's case. Luther being informed replied to Frederick, "I am
heartily glad that His Majesty will take to himself this affair, which
is not mine but that of all Christianity and the whole German nation."

But Charles by this promise evidently did not mean that Luther
was to have a public hearing before the diet. Instead a committee was
appointed to handle the case, and Aleander was permitted to address
it. He bungled his advantage at the very beginning by undertaking
to demonstrate that Luther was an abominable heretic, whereas in all
consistency he ought to have pleaded that a lay committee had no
jurisdiction. Instead he sought to demonstrate from a medieval manu-
script that the papacy was at least as old as Charlemagne. All of this
would have been pertinent enough at the Leipzig debate, but the time
for such discussion had gone by. In the meantime the pope had
spoken; and the diet was being invited, not to ratify, but simply
to implement the papal verdict. The committee listened and said
they would have to wait.

The delays served to feed the mood of popular violence in the
city. The reports which we have from opposing sides indicate that
religious war lay in the offing- Aleander, in the mood of a martyr,
reported:

Martin is pictured with a halo and a dove above his head. The people
kiss these pictures. Such a quantity have been sold that I was not able to
obtain one. A cartoon has appeared showing Luther with a book in

175

HERE I STAND

his hand, accompanied by Hutten in armor with a sword under the
caption, "Champions of Christian Liberty." Another sheet portrays
Luther in front and Hutten behind carrying a chest on which are two
chalices with the inscription, "The Ark of the True Faith." Erasmus, in
front, is playing the harp as David. In the background is John Hus, whom
Luther has recently proclaimed his saint. In another part of the picture
the pope and the cardinals are being bound by the soldiers of the guard.
I cannot go out on the streets but the Germans put their hands to their
swords and gnash their teeth at me. I hope the pope will give me a
plenary indulgence and look after my brothers and sisters if anything
happens to me.

The disturbances are described from the other side in a letter of a
Humanist at Worms to Hutten:

A Spaniard tore up your edition of the bull and trampled it in the mud.
A chaplain of the emperor and two Spaniards caught a man with sixty
copies of The Babylonian Captivity. The people came to the rescue, and
the assailants had to take refuge in the castle. A mounted Spaniard pursued
one of our men, who barely escaped through a door. The Spaniard reined
up so suddenly that he fell off his horse and could not rise until a German
lifted him. Every day two or three Spaniards gallop on their mules
through the market place, and the people have to make way for them.
This is our freedom.

Overt violence was continually incited by the dissemination of de-
famatory pamphlets. Aleander claimed that a wagon would not hold
the scurrilous tracts with which Worms was deluged, such as a parody
on the Apostles' Creed:

I believe in the pope, binder and looser in heaven, earth, and hell, and
in Simony, his only son our lord, who was conceived by the canon law
and bom of the Romish church. Under his power truth suffered, was
crucified, dead and buried, and through the ban descended to hell, rose
again through the gospel and Paul and was brought to Charles, sitting
at his right hand, who in future is to rule over spiritual and worldly
things. I believe in the canon law, in the Romish church, in the destruction
of faith and of the communion of saints, in indulgences both for the
remission of guilt and penalty in purgatory, in the resurrection of the

176

HERE I STAND

flesh in an Epicurean life, because given to us by the Holy Father, the
pope. Amen.

The emperor was irritated. When on February 6 Luther's appeal
was handed to him, he tore it up and trampled on it. But he was quick
to recover his composure and summoned a plenary session of the diet
on the thirteenth of February. The plan was to present a new version
of the edict, to be issued in the name of the emperor but with the
consent of the diet. Aleander was given an opportunity to prepare
their minds in a three-hour speech. Once again he allowed the oppor-
tunity to slip through his fingers. He was now in a position to correct
the mistake he had made in addressing the committee. Two days
previously the papal bull excommunicating Luther had come into his
hands. He had only to produce it to alky the objection that the
diet was being asked to outlaw a man not yet banned by the Church.
This was the time when Aleander held back because the bull named
not only Luther but Hutten. The document was not produced.
The diet proceeded to examine a case of heresy, and Aleander him-
self rather than Luther was responsible for turning a secular assembly
into a church council.

Aleander unquestionably made a very good case against Luther,
a very much better case than did the bull, which simply incorporated
the earlier condemnation of Exsurge Domme, with no fresh examina-
tion of the more subversive tracts of the summer of 1520. Aleander
had memorized whole sections of these works and set out again to
prove that Luther was

a heretic who brought up John Hus from hell and endorsed not some
but all of his articles. In consequence he must endorse also Wyclif s denial
of the real presence [which he did not], and Wyclif s claim that no
Christian can bind another by law. This point Luther claimed to have
asserted in his freedom of the Christian Man [which he did not]. He
rejects monastic vows. He rejects ceremonies. He appeals to councils
and rejects the authority of councils. Like all heretics he appeals to Scrip-
ture and yet rejects Scripture when it does not support him. He would
throw out the Epistle of James because it contains the proof text for
extreme unction [which certainly was not Luther's reason]. He is a

177

HERE I STAND

heretic and an obstinate heretic. He asks for a hearing, but how can a
hearing be given to one who will not listen to an angel from heaven? He
is also a revolutionary. He claims that the Germans should wash their
hands in the blood of the papists. [The reference is obviously to Luther's
unbridled outburst against Prierias.]

No more damaging case could have been made against Luther
before the diet, which was now asked to endorse the imperial edict
proclaiming Luther a Bohemian heretic and a revolutionary who
would soon be formally excommunicated by the pope. (The bull.,
of course, had been held back.) Unless absolved, he should be im-
prisoned and his books eradicated. Non-co-operators with the edict
would be guilty of lese majesty. The presentation of this edict
precipitated a storm. The electors of Saxony and Brandenburg had
to be separated on the floor of the diet by Cardinal Lang. The Elector
Palatinate, ordinarily taciturn, bellowed like a bull. The estates de-
manded time, and on the nineteenth answered that Luther's teaching
was already so firmly rooted among the people that a condemnation
without a hearing would occasion grave danger of insurrection.
He should be brought to the diet under safe conduct, to be examined
by learned men. He should be brought to answer, not to argue.
If he would renounce what he had said against the faith, other points
could be discussed. If he refused, then the diet would support the
edict.

INVITATION TO LUTHER RENEWED

The emperor thereupon reverted to his earlier agreement that
Luther should come. The edict was subjected to dentistry. The
penalties for lese majesty were dropped. The edict should be issued
in the name of the estates rather than of the emperor alone, and Luther
should be brought to the diet for examination. The emperor then
composed a new invitation for Luther. It was dated the sixth, although
not sent until the eleventh, because in the meantime another attempt
was made to induce Frederick to assume responsibility for bringing
the accused. But again he passed the onus directly back to the em-
peror, who at last sent the missive addressed to "Our noble, dear, and

178

HERE I STAND

esteemed Martin Luther." "Zounds!" exclaimed Aleander when he
saw it, "that's no way to address a heretic." The letter continued:
"Both we and the diet have decided to ask you to come under safe
conduct to answer with regard to your books and teaching. You
shall have twenty-one days in which to arrive." There is no clear
statement that discussion would be precluded. The invitation was
delivered at the hands, not of the common postman, but of the im-
perial herald, Caspar Sturm.
Would Luther come? There was real doubt. To Spalatin he wrote:

I will reply to the emperor that if I am being invited simply to recant
I will not come. If to recant is all that is wanted, I can do that perfectly
well right here. But if he is inviting me to my death, then I will come. I
hope none but the papists will stain their hands in my blood, Antichrist
reigns. The Lord's will be done.

To another he wrote:

This shall be my recantation at Worms: "Previously I said the pope is
the vicar of Christ. I recant. Now I say the pope is the adversary of Christ
and the apostle of the Devil."

Evidently Luther had decided to go.

On the way he learned of an edict for the sequestration of his
books. Its publication had been delayed, perhaps through fear that
if he saw it he would infer that the case was settled and would not
come. But his comment was, "Unless I am held back by force, or
Caesar revokes his invitation, I will enter Worms under the banner
of Christ against the gates of hell." He had no illusions as to the
probable outcome. After an ovation at Erfurt he commented, "I have
had my Palm Sunday. I wonder whether this pomp is merely a temp-
tation or whether it is also the sign of my impending passion."

While his coming was awaited, another lampoon was published in
Worms, entitled the Litany of the Germans:

Christ hear the Germans; Christ hear the Germans. From evil counselors
deliver Charles, O Lord. From poison on the way to Worms deliver

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HERE I STAND

Martin Luther, preserve Ulrich von Hutten, O Lord. Suffer not thyself,
Lord, to be crucified afresh. Purge Aleander, O Lord. The nuncios work-
ing against Luther at Worms, smite from heaven. O Lord Christ, hear
the Germans.

The Catholic moderates, however, desired that the case might be
disposed of out of court. The leader of this party was Glapion, the
emperor's confessor. Whether he was a sincere Erasmian or a son
of duplicity is debatable, but he certainly began his negotiations be-
fore there could be any suspicion that he was trying to divert Luther
from Worms until after the expiration of the safe conduct. Glapion
had previously approached Frederick the Wise with a very engaging
argument. Luther's earlier works, he claimed, had warmed his heart.
He thoroughly agreed with the attack on indulgences and saw in
The Freedom of the Christian Man a wonderful Christian spirit.
But when he had read The Babylonian Captivity, he was simply
aghast. He could not believe that Luther would acknowledge the
book. It was not in his usual style. If he had written it, he must have
done so in a fit of passion. In that case he should be ready to have it
interpreted in the sense of the Church. If he would comply, he would
have many supporters. The matter should be settled in private, else
the Devil would stir up contention, war, and insurrection. No good
could come of public controversy, and only the Devil would profit
from Luther's appearance at Worms.

The appeal was most ingratiating because it was so true. Had
Luther been willing to abandon the attack on the sacraments, he
might have rallied a united German nation for the reduction of papal
power and extortion. The diet might have wrung from the pope
the sort of concessions already granted to the strong national states
of France, Spain, and England. Schism might have been avoided, and
religious war could have been averted. To a man like Frederick
the Wise this must have been a most appealing proposal, but he was
resolved to make no overtures which would give the emperor an op-
portunity to evade his responsibility.

Gkpion then turned to another quarter. Why not work through

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HERE I STAND

Sickingen and Hutten? First, engage Hutten with a pension from
the emperor; then let Luther be invited to Sickingen's castle at the
Ebernburg for a conference. Glapion had the courage to go in person
and beard Hutten and Sickingen in their eagle's nest. He was so
sympathetic toward Luther and made the emperor appear so favor-
able that Hutten accepted the pension (subsequently to be declined),
and Sickingen sent his chaplain, Martin Bucer, to intercept Luther
on the way to Worms and to extend the invitation. But Luther had
set his face to go up to Jerusalem and would not be turned aside. He
would enter Worms though there were as many devils as tiles on the
roofs. Hutten was moved. "It is as clear as day," he wrote Pirkheimer,
"that he was directed by divine guidance. He disregarded all human
considerations and threw himself utterly upon God." And to Luther,
"Here is the difference between us. I look to men. You, who are
already more perfect, trust everything to God."

LUTHER BEFORE THE DIET

On the sixteenth of April, Luther entered Worms in a Saxon
two-wheeled cart with a few companions. The imperial herald pre-
ceded, wearing the eagle upon his cloak. Although it was the dinner
hour, two thousand turned out to conduct Luther to his lodging.
On the following day at four o'clock Luther was waited upon by the
herald and the imperial marshal, who conducted him furtively, to
avoid the crowds, to a meeting of the emperor, the electors, and a
portion of the estates. The monk stood before the monarch, who ex-
claimed, "That fellow will never make a heretic of me."

The scene lends itself to dramatic portrayal. Here was Charles, heir
of a long line of Catholic sovereigns of Maximilian the romantic, of
Ferdinand the Catholic, of Isabella the orthodox scion of the house
of Hapsburg, lord of Austria, Burgundy, the Low Countries, Spain,
and Naples, Holy Roman Emperor, ruling over a vaster domain than
any save Charlemagne, symbol of the medieval unities, incarnation
of a glorious if vanishing heritage; and here before him a simple monk,
a miner's son, with nothing to sustain him save his own faith in the
Word of God. Here the past and the future were met. Some would

181

HERE I STAND

see at this point the beginning of modern times. The contrast is real
enough. Luther himself was sensible of it in a measure. He was well
aware that he had not been reared as the son of Pharaoh's daughter,
but what overpowered him was not so much that he stood in the
presence of the emperor as this, that he and the emperor alike were
called upon to answer before Almighty God.

Luther was examined by an official of the Archbishop of Trier,
Eck by name, not of course the Eck of the Leipzig debate. Luther
was confronted with a pile of his books and asked whether they were

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LUTHER'S FIRST HEARING AT WORMS
182

HERE I STAND

his. The very question reopened the overture of Glapion. Luther
might now repudiate The Babylonian Captivity and invite discussion
of the financial and political pretensions of the papacy. This was his
opportunity to rally a united Germany. In a voice barely audible
he answered, "The books are all mine, and I have written more."

The door was closed, but Eck opened it again. "Do you defend
them all, or do you care to reject a part?"

Luther reflected aloud, "This touches God and his Word, This
affects the salvation of souls. Of this Christ said, 'He who denies
me before men, him will I deny before my father.' To say too little
or too much would be dangerous. I beg you, give me time to think it

over."

The emperor and the diet deliberated. Eck brought the answer. He
expressed amazement that a theological professor should not be ready
at once to defend his position, particularly since he had come for that
very purpose. He deserved no consideration. Nevertheless, the em-
peror in his clemency would grant him until the morrow.

Eck's amazement has been so shared by some modern historians as
to prompt the suggestion that Luther's request was preconcerted, a
part of the stalling tactic of Frederick the Wise. But anyone who
recalls Luther's tremors at his first mass will scarcely so interpret
this hesitation. Just as then he wished to flee from the altar, so now
he was too terrified before God to give an answer to the emperor.
At the same time we must admit that Luther's tremor before the Divine
Majesty served actually to bring him before a plenary session of the
diet. On the following day, the eighteenth, a larger hall was chosen
and was so crowded that scarcely any save the emperor could sit.
The terror of the Holy conspired to give Luther a hearing before
the German nation.

He had been summoned for four o'clock on the afternoon of the
morrow, but the press of business delayed his appearance until six.
This time his voice was ringing. Eck reiterated the question of the
previous day. Luther responded: "Most serene emperor, most illus-
trious princes, most clement lords, if I have not given some of you
your proper tides I beg you to forgive me. I am not a courtier, but

183

HERE I STAND

a monk. You asked me yesterday whether the books were mine and
whether I would repudiate them. They are all mine, but as for the
second question, they are not all of one sort."

This was a skillful move. By differentiating his works Luther won
for himself the opportunity of making a speech instead of answering
simply yes or no.

He went on: "Some deal with faith and life so simply and evan-
gelically that my very enemies are compelled to regard them as
worthy of Christian reading. Even the bull itself does not treat all
my books as of one kind. If I should renounce these, I would be
the only man on earth to damn the truth confessed alike by friends
and foes. A second class of my works inveighs against the desolation
of the Christian world by the evil lives and teaching of the papists.
Who can deny this when the universal complaints testify that by the
laws of the popes the consciences of men are racked?"

"No!" broke in the emperor.

Luther, unruffled, went on to speak of the "incredible tyranny"
by which this German nation was devoured. "Should I recant at this
point, I would open the door to more tyranny and impiety, and it
will be all the worse should it appear that I had done so at the instance
of the Holy Roman Empire." This was a skillful plea to German
nationalism, which had a strong following in the diet. Even Duke
George the Catholic took the fore in presenting grievances.

"A third class," continued Luther, "contains attacks on private
individuals. I confess I have been more caustic than comports with
my profession, but I am being judged, not on my life, but for the
teaching of Christ, and I cannot renounce these works either, without
increasing tyranny and impiety. When Christ stood before Annas,
he said, 'Produce witnesses.' If our Lord, who could not err, made this
demand, why may not a worm like me ask to be convicted of error
from the prophets and the Gospels? If I am shown my error, I will
be the first to throw my books into the fire. I have been reminded of
the dissensions which my teaching engenders. I can answer only in
the words of the Lord, *I came not to bring peace but a sword.' If our
God is so severe, let us beware lest we release a deluge of wars,

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HERE I STAND

lest the reign of this noble youth, Charles, be inauspicious. Take
warning from the examples of Pharaoh, the king of Babylon, and the
kings of Israel. God it is who confounds the wise. I must walk in
the fear of the Lord. I say this not to chide but because I cannot escape
my duty to my Germans. I commend myself to Your Majesty. May
you not suffer my adversaries to make you ill disposed to me without
cause. I have spoken."

Eck replied: "Martin, you have not sufficiently distinguished your
works. The earlier were bad and the latter worse. Your plea to be
heard from Scripture is the one always made by heretics. You do
nothing but renew the errors of Wyclif and Hus. How will the Jews,
how will the Turks, exult to hear Christians discussing whether they
have been wrong all these years! Martin, how can you assume that
you are the only one to understand the sense of Scripture? Would you
put your judgment above that of so many famous men and claim that
you know more than they all? You have no right to call into question
the most holy orthodox faith, instituted by Christ the perfect law-
giver, proclaimed throughout the world by the apostles, sealed by
the red blood of the martyrs, confirmed by the sacred councils, de-
fined by the Church in which all our fathers believed until death and
gave to us as an inheritance, and which now we are forbidden by the
pope and the emperor to discuss lest there be no end of debate. I ask
you, Martin answer candidly and without horns do you or do you
not repudiate your books and the errors which they contain?"
Luther replied, "Since then Your Majesty and your lordships desire
a simple reply, I will answer without horns and without teeth. Unless
I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason I do not accept the
authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each
other my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and
I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right
nor safe. God help me. Amen."

The earliest printed version added the words: "Here I stand, I can-
not do otherwise." The words, though not recorded on the spot, may
nevertheless be genuine, because the listeners at the moment may have
been too moved to write.

HERE I STAND

Luther had spoken in German. He was asked to repeat in Latin.
He was sweating. A friend called out, "If you can't do it, Doctor,
you have done enough." Luther made again his affirmation in Latin,
threw up his arms in the gesture of a victorious knight, and slipped
out of the darkened hall, amid the hisses of the Spaniards, and went
to his lodging. Frederick the Wise went also to his lodging and re-
marked, "Dr. Martin spoke wonderfully before the emperor, the
princes, and the estates in Latin and in German, but he is too daring
for me." On the following day Aleander heard the report that all six
of the electors were ready to pronounce Luther a heretic. That would
include Frederick the Wise. Spalatin says that Frederick was indeed
much troubled to know whether Luther had or had not been con-
victed from the Scriptures.

THE EDICT OF WORMS

The emperor called in the electors and a number of the princes to
ask their opinions. They requested time. "Very well," said the em-
peror, "I will give you my opinion," and he read to them a paper
which he had written out himself in French. This was no speech com-
posed by a secretary. The young Hapsburg was confessing his faith:

I am descended from a long line of Christian emperors of this noble
German nation, and of the Catholic kings of Spain, the archdukes of
Austria, and the dukes of Burgundy. They were all faithful to the death
to the Church of Rome, and they defended the Catholic faith and the
honor of God. I have resolved to follow in their steps. A single friar who
goes counter to all Christianity for a thousand years must be wrong.
Therefore I am resolved to stake my knds, my friends, my body, my
blood, my life, and my soul. Not only I, but you of this noble German
nation, would be forever disgraced if by our negligence not only heresy
but the very suspicion of heresy were to survive. After having heard
yesterday the obstinate defense of Luther, I regret that I have so long
delayed in proceeding against him and his false teaching. I will have no
more to do with him. He may return under his safe conduct, but without
preaching or making any tumult. I will proceed against him as a notorious
heretic, and ask you to declare yourselves as you promised me.

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HERE I STAND

Many of the emperor's hearers took on the hue of death. On the
following day the electors declared themselves fully in accord with
the emperor, but out of six only four signed. The dissenters were

LUTHER'S SECOND HEARING AT WORMS

In hand t writing: Intitulentur libri "Let them read the titles? the 'words called
out by Luther's lawyer; arid Hier stehe ich/ ich kann nicht anders/ Got hilffe
mir. Amen. "Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen?

Ludwig of the Palatinate and Frederick of Saxony. He had come
into the clear.

The emperor felt now that he had sufficient backing to proceed
with the edict, but during the night there was posted on the door of
the town hall and elsewhere in Worms a placard stamped with the
Bundschuh. This was the symbol of the peasants' revolt, the sandal
clog of the workingman in contrast to the high boot of the noble.
For a century Germany had been distraught by peasant unrest. This
poster strongly implied that if Luther were condemned, the peasants
would rise. Where the poster came from could only be guessed.

187

HERE I STAND

Hutten surmised that it had been placarded by the papalists in order
to discredit the Lutherans, but Aleander was equally innocent of the
source. Whoever did it, Albert of Mainz was in a panic. At dawn he
rushed to the lodging of the emperor, who laughed at him. But Albert
would not be put off, and enlisted his brother Joachim, the most ardent
opponent of Luther. At the instance of these two the estates petitioned
the emperor to permit Luther to be examined again. The emperor
replied that he would have nothing to do with it himself, but that they
might have three days.

Then began the attempt to break Luther down through a com-
mittee. The ordeal, though less dramatic, was more crucial than the
public appearance. He who is able to give a ringing No before a
public assembly may find it harder, if he is at all sensitive, to resist
the kindly remonstrances of men concerned to prevent the disruption
of Germany and the disintegration of the Church. The committee
was headed by Richard of Greiff enklau, the Archbishop of Trier,
the custodian of the seamless robe of Christ, whom Frederick the Wise
had so long been proposing as the arbiter. With him were associated
some of Luther's friends and some of his foes, among them Duke
George.

In a slightly different form the attempt of Glapion to secure a
partial revocation was renewed. Luther's attack on the indulgence
sellers was again declared to have been warranted, and his denuncia-
tion of Roman corruption was heart-warming. He had written well
about good works and the Ten Commandments, but The Freedom of
the Christian Man would prompt the masses to reject all authority.
One observes that this time the attack centered not on the demolition
of the sacramental system in The Babylonian Captivity but on the
alleged threat to public tranquillity in the tract on Christian liberty.
Luther replied that he intended nothing of the sort and would counsel
obedience even to evil magistrates. Trier besought him not to rend the
seamless robe of Christendom. He answered with the counsel of
Gamaliel, to wait and see whether his teaching was of God or of man.
Luther was reminded that if he went down, Melanchthon would be
pulled after him At this his eyes welled with tears; but when asked

188

HERE I STAND

to name a judge whom he would accept, he stiffened and replied that
he would name a child of eight or nine years. "The pope," he declared,
"is no judge of matters pertaining to God's Word and faith, but
a Christian man must examine and judge for himself." The committee
reported failure to the emperor.

On the sixth of May, His Majesty presented to a diminishing diet
the final draft of the Edict of Worms, prepared by Aleander. Luther
was charged with attacking the seven sacraments after the manner of
the damned Bohemians.

He has sullied marriage, disparaged confession, and denied the body
and blood of our Lord. He makes the sacraments depend on the faith
of the recipient. He is pagan in his denial of free will. This devil in the
habit of a monk has brought together ancient errors into one stinking
puddle and has invented new ones. He denies the power of the keys and
encourages the laity to wash their hands in the blood of the clergy. His
teaching makes for rebellion, division, war, murder, robbery, arson, and
the collapse of Christendom. He lives the life of a beast. He has burned
the decretals. He despises alike the ban and the sword. He does more
harm to the civil than to the ecclesiastical power. We have labored with
him, but he recognizes only the authority of Scripture, which he interprets
in his own sense. We have given him twenty-one days, dating from April
the 15th. We have now gathered the estates. Luther is to be regarded as
a convicted heretic [although the bull of excommunication still had not
been published]. When the time is up, no one is to harbor him. His
followers ako are to be condemned. His books are to be eradicated from
the memory of man.

Aleander brought the edict to the emperor for his signature. He
took up the pen. "Then," says Aleander, "I haven't the ghost of a
notion why, he laid it down and said he must submit the edict to the
diet." The emperor knew why. The members were going home.
Frederick the Wise had left. Ludwig of the Palatinate had left. Those
who remained were a rump ready to condemn Luther. Although the
edict was dated as of the sixth of May, it was not issued until the twen-
ty-sixth. By that time the diet was sufficiently reduced to consent. The
emperor then signed. Aleander recorded:

189

HERE I STAND

His Majesty signed both the Latin and the German with his own blessed
hand, and smiling said, "You will be content now." "Yes," I answered,
"and even greater will be the contentment of His Holiness and of all
Christendom." We praise God for giving us such a religious emperor.
May God preserve him in all his holy ways, who has already acquired
perpetual glory, and with God eternal reward. I was going to recite a
paean from Ovid when I recalled that this was a religious occasion.
Therefore blessed be the Holy Trinity for his immense mercy.

The Edict of Worms, passed by a secular tribunal entrusted with a
case of heresy at the instance of Lutherans and against the opposition
of the papalists, was at once repudiated by the Lutherans as having
been passed by only a rump, and was sponsored by the papalists be-
cause it was a confirmation of the Catholic faith. The Church of
Rome, which had so strenuously sought to prevent turning the Diet
of Worms into an ecclesiastical council, became in the light of the
outcome the great vindicator of the pronouncement of a secular
tribunal on heresy.

190

CHAPTER ELEVEN

MY PATMOS

OSTTEMPORARIES deemed Luther's trial at
Worms a re-enactment of the passion of
Christ. Albrecht Diirer on the seventeenth of
May recorded in his diary this prayer: "O
Lord, who desirest before thou comest to
judgment that as thy Son Jesus Christ had to
die at the hands of the priests and rise from
the dead and ascend to heaven, even so should
thy disciple Martin Luther be made conformable to him." The secular-
ized twentieth century is more shocked by such a comparison than
the sixteenth, when men walked in a perpetual Passion play. Some
anonymous pamphleteer did not hesitate to narrate the proceedings
at Worms in the very language of the Gospels, identifying Albert
with Caiaphas, Lang with Annas, Frederick with Peter, and Charles
with Pilate. Our sole account of the burning of Luther's books at
Worms is from this document and reads:

Then the governor [Charles in the role of Pilate] delivered to them the
books of Luther to be burned. The priests took them; and when the
princes and the people had left, the diet made a great pyre in front of the
high priest's palace, where they burned the books, placing on the top a
picture of Luther with this inscription, "This is Martin Luther, the Doctor
of the GospeL" The title was read by many Romanists because the place
where Luther's books were burned was not far from the bishop's court.
Now this title was written in French, German, and in Latin.

Then die high priests and the Romanists said to the governor, 'Write
not, *A Doctor of evangelical truth,' but that he said, *I am a Doctor of
evangelical truth.' "

191

HERE I STAND

But the governor answered, "What I have written I have written."

And with him two other doctors were burned, Hutten and Carlstadt,
one on the right and one on the left. But the picture of Luther would
not burn until the soldiers had folded it and put it inside a vessel of pitch,
where it was reduced to ashes. As a count beheld these things which were
done, he marveled and said, "Truly he is a Christian." And all the throng
present, seeing these things which had come to pass, returned beating
their breasts.

The following day the chief priests and the Pharisees, together with
the Romanists, went to the governor and said, "We recall that this seducer
said he wished later to write greater things. Make an order, therefore,
throughout the whole earth that his books be not sold, lest the latest
error be worse than the first."

But the governor said, cc You have your own guard. Go publish bulls,
as you know how, through your false excommunication." They then went
away and put forth horrible mandates in the name of the Roman pontiff
and of the emperor, but to this day they have not been obeyed*

This picture of Charles as Pilate yielding only reluctantly to the
churchmen does not of course fit the facts. In his private domains
the Counter Reformation, already begun, was pursued in earnest.
Aleander returned to the Netherlands, and the burning of books
went on merrily. As a certain friar was supervising a bonfire, a by-
stander said to him, "You would see better if the ashes of Luther's
books got into your eyes." He was a bold man who dared to say so
much. Erasmus, at Louvain, began to realize that the choice for him
would soon lie between the stake or exile. Ruefully confessing that he
was not cut out for martyrdom, he transferred his residence to Basel.

Albrecht Diirer in the Netherlands received the word that Lu-
ther's passion was complete. He reflected in his diary:

I know not whether he lives or is murdered, but in any case he has
suffered for the Christian truth. If we lose this man, who has written more
clearly than any other in centuries, may God grant his spirit to another.
His books should be held in great honor, and not burned as the emperor
commands, but rather the books of his enemies. O God, if Luther is dead,
who will henceforth explain to us the gospel? What might he not have
written for us in the next ten or twenty years?

192

MY PATMOS

THE WARTBURG

AT THE WARTBURG

Luther was not dead. His friends began to receive letters "From the
Wilderness," "From the Isle of Patmos." Frederick the Wise had
decided to hide him, and gave instructions to court officials to make
the arrangements without divulging the details, even to himself, that
he might truthfully feign innocence. Spalatin, however, might know.
Luther and one companion
were apprised of the plan. Lu-
ther was not very happy over
it. He had set his face to re-
turn to Wittenberg, come
what might. With a few com-
panions in a wagon he was
entering the woods on the out-
skirts of the village of Eisen-
ach when armed horsemen
fell upon the party and with
much cursing and show of
violence dragged Luther to the ground. The one companion, privy to
the ruse, played his part and roundly berated the abductors. They
placed Luther upon a horse and led him for a whole day by circuitous
roads through the woods until at dusk, loomed up against the sky, the
massive contours of Wartburg Castle. At eleven o'clock in the night
the party reined up before the gates.

This ancient fortress was already the symbol of a bygone day, when
German knighthood was in flower and sanctity unquestioned as the
highest end of man. Here monarchs and minstrels, knights and fools,
had had their assemblage, and here St. Elizabeth had left the relics of
her holiness. But Luther was of no mind for historic reveries. As he
laid him down in the chamber of the almost untenanted bastion, and
the owls and bats wheeled about in the darkness, it seemed to him that
the Devil was pelting nuts at the ceiling and rolling casks down the
stairs. More insidious than such pranks of the Prince of Darkness was
the unallayed question, "Are you alone wise? Have so many centuries
gone wrong? What if you are in error and are taking so many others

193

HERE I STAND

with you to eternal damnation?" In the morning he threw open the
casement window and looked out on the fair Thuringian hills. In the
distance he could see a cloud of smoke rising from the pits of the
charcoal burners. A gust of wind lifted and dissipated the cloud. Even
so were his doubts dispelled and his faith restored.

But only for a moment. The
mood of Elijah at Horeb was
upon him. The priests of Baal
indeed were slain, but Jezebel
sought the prophet's life, and he
cried, "It is enough! Now, O
Lord, take away my life!" Lu-
ther passed from one self-in-
crimination to another. If he had
not been in error, then had he
been sufficiently firm in the de-
fense of truth? "My conscience
troubles me because at Worms
I yielded to the importunity of
my friends and did not play the
part of Elijah. They would hear
other things from me if I were
before them again." And when
he contemplated the sequel, he
could not well feel encouraged.
"What an abominable spectacle is the kingdom of the Roman Anti-
christ," he wrote to Melanchthon. "Spalatin writes of the most cruel
edicts against me."

Yet all the outward peril was as nothing to the inner struggles. "I
can tell you in this idle solitude there are a thousand battles with Satan.
It is much easier to fight against the incarnate Devil that is, against
men than against spiritual wickedness in the heavenly places. Often
I fall and am lifted again by God's right hand." Solitude and idleness
increased his distress. To Spalatin he wrote, "Now is the time to pray
with our might against Satan. He is plotting an attack on Germany,

194

LUTHER AS JUNKER GEORGE AT THE
WARTBURG

MY PATMOS

and I fear God will permit him because I am so indolent in prayer. I
am mightily displeasing to myself, perhaps because I am alone." He
wasn't quite alone. There were the warden and two serving boys, but
they were hardly the sort to whom he could unburden himself as to
Staupitz of old. He had been warned not to seek out company and not
to become confidential lest he betray himself. The monk's cowl was
laid aside. He dressed as a knight and grew a long beard. The warden
did his best to provide a diversion, and included Luther in a hunting
party. But he was revolted. "There is some point/' he reflected, "in
tracking down bears, wolves, boars, and foxes, but why should one
pursue a harmless creature like a rabbit?" One ran up his leg to escape
the dogs, but they bit through the cloth and killed it. "Just as the pope
and the Devil treat us," commented the inveterate theologian.

He was idle, so he said. At any rate he was removed from the fracas.
"I did not want to come here," he wrote. "I wanted to be in the fray."
And again, "I had rather burn on live coals than rot here."

To loneliness and lack of public activity were added physical ills
which were not new but were greatly accentuated by the circum-
stances. While still at Worms he had been overtaken by acute attacks
of constipation, due perhaps to nervous depletion after the crucial
days. The restricted diet and the sedentary ways at the Wartburg
made the case worse. He was minded to risk his life by forsaking his
concealment in order to procure medical assistance at Erfurt. Com-
plaints continued from May until October, when Spalatin was able to
send in laxatives.

The other malady was insomnia. It began in 1520 through attempts
to make up arrears in saying the canonical hours. All through his con-
troversy with Rome he was still a monk, obligated to say matins, tierce,
nones, vespers, and complin. But when he became a professor at the
university, a preacher in the village church, and the director of eleven
monasteries, he was simply too busy to keep up. He would stack his
prayers for a week, two weeks, even three weeks, and then would take
off a Sunday or, on one occasion, three whole days without food or
drink until he was "prayed up." After such an orgy in 1520 his head
reeled. For five days he could get no sleep, and lay on his bed as one

195

LUTHER AS THE EVANGELIST MATTHEW
TRANSLATING THE SCRIPTURES

MY PATMOS

dead, until the doctor gave him a sedative. During convalescence the
prayer book revolted him, and he fell in arrears a quarter of a year.
Then he gave up. This was one of the stages in his weaning from
monasticism. The permanent residue of the experience was insomnia.
Luther found one cure for depressions at the Wartburg, and that
was work. "That I may not be idle in my Patmos," he said, in dedicat-
ing a tract to Sickingen, "I have written a book of Revelation." He
wrote not one, but closer to a dozen. To a friend at Strassburg he ex-
plained:

It would not be safe to send you my books, but I have asked Spalatin
to see to it. I have brought out a reply to Catharinus and another to
Latomus, and in German a work on confession, expositions of Psalms 67
and 36, a commentary on the Magnificat, and a translation of Melanch-
thon's reply to the University of Paris. I have under way a volume of
sermons on the lessons from the epistles and Gospels. I am attacking the
Cardinal of Mainz and expounding the ten lepers.

On top of all this he translated the entire New Testament into his
mother tongue. This was his stint for the year. One wonders whether
his depressions were anything more than the rhythm of work and
fatigue.

THE REFORMATION AT WITTENBERG: MONASTICISM

Nor was he actually removed from the fray. The reformation at
Wittenberg moved with disconcerting velocity, and he was kept
abreast of it in so far as tardy communication and the conditions of
his concealment permitted. His opinion was continually solicited, and
his answers affected the developments, even though he was not in a
position to take the initiative. Leadership fell to Melanchthon, profes-
sor of Greek at the university; to Carlstadt, professor and archdeacon
at the Castle Church; and to Gabriel Zwilling, a monk of Luther's own
order, the Augustinians. Under the lead of these men the reformation
for the first time assumed a form distinctly recognizable to the common
man.

Nothing which Luther had done hitherto made any difference to
the ways of ordinary folk, except of course the attack on indulgences,

197

HERE I STAND

but that had not as yet proved especially effective. While at the Wart-
burg, Luther learned that Cardinal Albert of Mainz was continuing
the old traffic at Halle. On the first of December, 1521, Luther in-
formed His Grace that he was quite mistaken if he thought Luther
dead.

You may think me out of the fray, but I will do what Christian love
demands, without regard to the gates of hell, let alone unlearned popes,
cardinals, and bishops. I beg you, show yourself not a wolf but a bishop.
It has been made plain enough that indulgences are rubbish and lies. See
what conflagration has come from a despised spark, so that now the pope
himself is singed. The same God is still alive, and he can resist the
Cardinal of Alainz though he be upheld by four emperors. This is the
God who breaks the cedars of Lebanon and humbles the hardened Phar-
aohs. You need not think Luther is dead. I will show the difference be-
tween a bishop and a wolf. I demand an immediate answer. If you do not
reply within two weeks, I will publish a tract against you.

The cardinal replied that the abuses had already been suppressed. He
confessed himself to be a stinking sinner, ready to receive correction.
That was something. Yet Luther was not able to say while at the
Wartburg that indulgences had been discontinued in his own parish
of Wittenberg. Then during his absence in 1521 and 1522 one inno-
vation followed another with disconcerting rapidity. Priests married,
monks married, nuns married. Nuns and monks even married each
other. The tonsured permitted their hair to grow. The wine in the
mass was given to the laity, and they were suffered to take the elements
into their own hands. Priests celebrated the sacrament without vest-
ments, in plain clothes. Portions of the mass were recited in the German
tongue. Masses for the dead were discontinued. Vigils ceased, vespers
were altered, images were smashed. Meat was eaten on fast days. En-
dowments were withdrawn by patrons. The enrollment in universities
declined because students were no longer supported by ecclesiastical
stipends. All this could not escape the eye of Hans and Gretel. Doc-
trine might go over their heads, but liturgy was a part of their daily
religious life. They realized now that the reformation meant some-
thing, and this began to worry Luther. The glorious liberty of the sons

198

HERE I STAND

of God was in danger of becoming a matter of clothes, diet, and hair-
cuts. But he applauded the changes at the start.

First came the marriage of priests. Luther had said in The Babylo-
nian Captivity that the laws of men cannot annul the commands of
God; and since God has ordained marriage, the union of a priest and
his wife is a true and indissoluble union. In the Address to the Nobility
he declared that a priest must have a housekeeper, and that to put man
and woman thus together is like bringing fire to straw and expecting
nothing to happen. Marriage should be free to priests, though the whole
canon law go to pieces. Let there be an end of unchaste chastity. Lu-
ther's advice was being put into practice. Three priests married in
1521 and were arrested by Albert of Mainz. Luther sent him a warm
protest. Albert consulted the University of Wittenberg. Carlstadt
answered with a work on celibacy, in which he went so far as to assert
not only that a priest might marry but that he must, and should also be
the father of a family. For obligatory celibacy he would substitute ob-
ligatory matrimony and paternity. And he got married himself. The
girl was described as of a noble family, neither pretty nor rich, appear-
ing to be about fifteen years of age. Carlstadt sent an announcement
to the Elector.

Most noble prince, I observe that in Scripture no estate is so highly
lauded as marriage. I observe also that marriage is allowed to the clergy,
and for lack of it many poor priests have suffered sorely in the dungeons
of the Devil. Therefore if Almighty God permits, I am going to marry
Anna Mochau on St. Sebastian's Eve, and I hope Your Grace approves.

Luther did. "I am very pleased over Carlstadt's marriage," he wrote.
"I know the girl."

Yet he had no mind to do the like himself because he was not only
a priest but also a monk. At first he was aghast when Carlstadt attacked
also monastic celibacy. "Good heavens! " wrote Luther, "will our Wit-
tenbergers give wives to monks? They won't give one to me!" But
tinder the fiery preaching of Gabriel Zwilling the Augustinian monks
began to leave the cloister. On November 30, fifteen withdrew. The
prior reported to the Elector:

200

MY PATMOS

It is being preached that no monk can be saved in a cowl, that cloisters
are in the grip of the Devil, that monks should be expelled and cloisters
demolished. Whether such teaching is grounded in the gospel I greatly
doubt.

But now should such monks be forced to go back? And if not, should
they be allowed to marry? Melanchthon consulted Luther. "I wish I
could talk this over with you," he replied

The case of a monk seems to me to be different from that of a priest.
The monk has voluntarily taken vows. You argue that a monastic vow
is not binding because it is incapable of fulfillment* By that token you
would abrogate all the divine precepts. You say that a vow entails servi-
tude. Not necessarily. St. Bernard lived happily under his vows. The real
question is not whether vows can be kept, but whether they have been
enjoined by God.

To find the answer Luther set himself to search the Scriptures. He
was not long in making up his mind, and soon sent to Wittenberg some
theses about vows. When they were read to the circle of the Witten-
berg clergy and professors, Bugenhagen, priest at the Castle Church,
pronounced the judgment, "These propositions will upset public in-
stitutions as Luther's doctrine up to this point would not have done."
The theses were shortly followed by a treatise On Monastic Vows. In
a preface addressed to "my dearest father" Luther professed now to
discern the hand of Providence in making him a monk against his par-
ents' will in order that he might be able to testify from experience
against monasticism. The monk's vow is unfounded in Scripture and
in conflict with charity and liberty. "Marriage is good, virginity is
better, but liberty is best." Monastic vows rest on the false assumption
that there is a special calling, a vocation, to which superior Christians
are invited to observe the counsels of perfection while ordinary Chris-
tians fulfill only the commands; but there simply is no special religious
vocation, declared Luther, since the call of God comes to each man at
the common tasks. "This is the work," said Jonas, "which emptied
the cloisters." Luther's own order in Wittenberg, the Augustinians,
at a meeting in January, instead of disciplining the apostate monks,

201

HERE I STAND

ruled that thereafter any member should be free to stay or leave as he
might please.

THE MASS

Next came the reform of the liturgy, which touched the common
man more intimately because it altered his daily devotions. He was be-
ing invited to drink the wine at the sacrament, to take the elements
into his own hands, to commune without previous confession, to hear
the words of institution in his own tongue, and to participate exten-
sively in sacred song.

Luther laid the theoretical groundwork for the most significant
changes. His principle was that the mass is not a sacrifice but a thanks-
giving to God and a communion with believers. It is not a sacrifice in
the sense of placating God, because he does not need to be placated;
and it is not an oblation in the sense of something offered, because man
cannot offer to God, but only receive. What then should be done with
such expressions in the mass as "this holy sacrifice," "this oblation,"
"these offerings"? In The Babylonian Captivity, Luther had inter-
preted them figuratively, but at the Wartburg he came to the more
drastic conclusion: "The words in the canon are plain; the words of
Scripture are plain. Let the canon yield to the gospel." The liturgy
then would have to be revised.

A particular form of the mass rested exclusively upon its sacrificial
character. This was the private mass for the benefit of departed spirits,
for whom the priest offered a sacrifice; and since they could not pos-
sibly be present, he communed alone. This form of the mass was called
private because privately endowed. It was also privately conducted.
Luther objected first to the principle of sacrifice and second to the
absence of the congregation. In The Babylonian Captivity he had been
willing to tolerate such masses as private devotions on the part of the
priest, provided of course that they were conducted in a devotional
spirit and not rattled through to complete the quota for the day. At
the Wartburg he reached a more pronounced position. To Melanch-
thon he wrote on the first of August, "I will never again celebrate a
private mass in eternity." Luther concluded a tract on the abolition of

202

MY PATMOS

private masses with an appeal to Frederick the Wise to emulate the
crusade of Frederick Barbarossa for the liberation of the Holy
Sepulchre. Let Frederick liberate the gospel at Wittenberg by abolish-
ing all the masses which he had privately endowed. Incidentally, a staff
of twenty-five priests was employed for the saying of such masses at
the Castle Church.

On the old question raised by the Hussites, whether the wine as
well as the bread should be given to the laity, Luther and the Witten-
bergers were agreed in desiring to restore the apostolic practice. As
to fasting and confession prior to communion Luther was indiffer-
ent. There was variance as to whether the priest should hold aloft the
elements. Carlstadt viewed the act as the presentation of a sacrifice to
be rejected, whereas Luther saw only a mark of reverence to be re-
tained.

THE OUTBREAK OF VIOLENCE

The agreement was certainly sufficient to warrant action, and
Melanchthon made a beginning on September 29 by administering
communion in both kinds to a few students in the parish church.
In the Augustinian cloister Zwilling delivered impassioned pleas to
the brothers to refuse to celebrate unless the mass was reformed. The
prior responded that he would rather have no mass than to have it
mutilated. Consequently the mass ceased in the Augustinian cloister on
October 23. In the Castle Church on All Saints* Day, November 1,
the very day for the exhibition of the relics and the dispensing of in-
dulgences, Justus Jonas branded indulgences as rubbish and clamored
for the abolition of vigils and private masses. In future he would re-
fuse to celebrate unless communicants were present. Popular violence
commenced. Students and townsmen so intimidated the old believers
that the faithful Augustinians feared for their own saf ety and for that
of their cloister. The elector was disturbed. As a prince he was re-
sponsible for the public peace. As a Christian he was concerned for
the true faith. He wished to be enlightened as to the meaning of Scrip-
ture, and appointed a committee. But the committee could not agree.
No group in Wittenberg could agree, neither the university, nor the

203

HERE I STAND

Atigustinians, nor the chapter at the Castle Church. "What a mess we
arc in/' said Spalatin, "with everybody doing something else."

The old order argued that God would not have suffered his Church
so long to be deceived. Changes should wait at least until unanimity
had been achieved, and the clergy should not be molested. Frederick
the Wise pointed out, moreover, to the innovators that masses were
endowed; and if the masses ceased, the endowments would cease. He
could not see how a priest could expect to get married, stop saying
mass, and still draw his stipend. The alteration of the mass concerned
all Christendom, he argued; and if a little town like Wittenberg
could not make up its mind, the rest of the world would not be im-
pressed. Above all, let there be no division and tumult. The Evangeli-
cals replied by pointing to the example of Christ and the apostles,
who, though but a handful, were not deterred from reform by the
fear of tumult. As for the ancestors who endowed the masses, if they
could return to life and receive better instruction, they would be
glad to have their money used to further the faith in a better way.
The old believers rebutted, "You need not think because you are a
handful that therefore you are in the position of Christ and the apos-
tles."

Luther's sympathies for the moment were with the handful, and
he was distressed because events were moving too slowly. He had
sent Spalatin the manuscripts of his tracts entitled On Monastic V&ws,
On the Abolition of Private Masses, and A Blast Against the Arch-
bishop of Mainz. None of them had appeared. Luther resolved to
make a trip incognito to Wittenberg to find the reason why.

204

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE RETURN OF THE EXILE

ITH BEARD SUFFICIENT tO deceive hlS HlOther

the exile from the Wartburg appeared on the
streets of Wittenberg on the fourth of De-
cember, 1521. He was immensely pleased with
all that his associates had lately introduced by
way of reform, but irate because his recent
tracts had not been published. If Spalatin had
withheld them from the printer, let him note
that worse would replace them. Spalatin thereupon released the
treatises on vows and private masses but still retained the blast against
Albert, which never did appear. Luther let it be known in Witten-
berg that he was contemplating a blast also against Frederick if he
did not disperse his collection of relics and contribute to the poor
fund all the gold and silver in which they were encased. At this
moment Luther was distinctly for speeding up the reformation.

But not by violence. The day before he arrived in Wittenberg
there had been a riot. Students and townsfolk, with knives under their
cloaks, invaded the parish church, snatched the mass books from the
altar, and drove out the priests. Stones were thrown against those
saying private devotions to the Virgin Mary. On the morrow, the
very day of Luther's arrival, the Franciscans were intimidated. This
was not the worst of it. Luther might perhaps have excused this tumult
as a student prank, but on the journeys to and from the Wartburg
he sensed among the people a revolutionary temper. He hastened,
therefore, to bring out a warning against recourse to violence.
"Remember," he warned, "that Antichrist, as Daniel said, is to be

205

HERE I STAND

broken without the hand of man. Violence will only make him strong-
er. Preach, pray, but do not fight. Not that all constraint is ruled
out, but it must be exercised by the constituted authorities."

But in the meantime at Wittenberg the constituted authority was
inhibirive. Elector Frederick issued an order on December 19 in
which he said that discussion might continue, but there could be no
changes in the mass until unanimity was reached. Carlstadt thereupon
undertook to defy the elector and announced that when his turn came
to say mass at New Year's he would give communion in both kinds
to the whole town. The elector interposed, but Carlstadt forestalled
him by trading his turn for Christmas and by issuing the public
invitation only the night before. The populace was stirred, and
Christmas Eve was celebrated by rioting. The mob invaded the parish
church, smashed the lamps, intimidated the priests, sang through
the church, "My maid has lost her shoe," and then from the courtyard
caterwauled against the choir. Finally they went to the Castle Church
and as the priest was giving the benediction wished him pestilence
and hell-fire.

TURMOIL

On Christmas Day 2,000 people assembled in the Castle Church
a tbe whole town," said a chronicler. And it very nearly was, for the
total population was only 2,500. Carlstadt officiated without vest-
ments in a plain black robe. In his sermon he told the people that in
preparation for the sacrament they had no need of fasting and
confession. If they felt that they must first be absolved, then they
lacked faith in the sacrament itself. Faith alone is needed, faith and
heartfelt longing and deep contrition. "See how Christ makes you a
sharer ia his blessedness if you believe. See how he has cleansed and
hallowed you through his promise. Still better, see that Christ stands
before yoo. He takes from you all your struggle and doubt, that you
may know that through his word you are blessed."

Then Carlstadt recited the mass in Latin, in very abbreviated f onn,
omitting aU the passages on sacrifice. At the consecration and distri-
butkm of tbe elements, both the bread and the wine, he passed from

206

THE RETURN OF THE EXILE

Latin into German. For the first time in their lives the 2,000 assembled
people heard in their own tongue the words, "This is the cup of my
blood of the new and eternal testament, spirit and secret of the faith,
shed for you to the remission of sins." One of the communicants so
trembled that he dropped the bread. Carlstadt told him to pick it up;

rmDdpfloer/ubcr (b tmgleich wurl two ftraffir.

A CARTOON AGAINST THE IMAGE BREAKERS

With a very graphic illustration of the saying on the mote and the beam in
the background.

but he who had had the courage to come forward and take the sacred
morsel into his own hand from the plate, when he saw it desecrated
on the floor was so overcome by all the terror of sacrilege to the body
of God that he could not bring himself to touch it again.

Under Carlstadt's leading the town council at Wittenberg issued
the first city ordinance of the Reformation. Mass was to be conducted
about as Carlstadt had done it- Luther's ideas on social reform were
implemented. Begging was forbidden. Those genuinely poor should
be maintained from a common fund. Prostitutes should be banned.
And then came quite a new point: images should be removed from
the churches.

The question of images, pictures, and statues of the saints and the
Virgin, and crucifixes, had been greatly agitated during the preced-
ing weeks, ^willing had led an iconoclastic riot, overturning altars
and smashing images and pictures of the saints. The author of the
idea was Carlstadt. He took his stand squarely upon Scripture: "Thou

207

HERE I STAND

shalt act make unto thce any graven image, or any likeness of any
thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that
is in the water under the earth." Scripture was reinforced by his own
experience. He had been so deeply attached to images as to be
diverted by them from true worship. "God is a spirit" and must
be worshiped only in spirit. Christ is a spirit, but the image of Christ
is wood, silver, or gold. One who contemplates a crucifix is reminded
only of the physical suffering of Christ rather than of his spiritual
tribulations*

Coupled with this attack on art in religion went an attack also on
music in religion. "Relegate organs, trumpets, and flutes to the
theater," said Carlstadt.

Better one heart-felt prayer than a thousand cantatas of the Psalms. The
lascivious notes of the organ awaken thoughts of the world. When we
should be meditating on the suffering of Christ, we are reminded of
Pyramus aiid Thisbe. Or, if there is to be singing, let it be no more than
a solo.

While Wittenberg was thus convulsed by iconoclasm, three laymen
arrived from the neighboring village of Zwickau, claiming to be
prophets of the Lord and to have had intimate conversations with
die Almighty. They had no need of the Bible but relied on the Spirit.
If the Bible were important, God would have dropped it directly
from heaven. They repudiated infant baptism and proclaimed the
speedy erection of the kingdom of the godly through the slaughter
of Ac ungodly, whether at the hands of the Turks or of the godly
themselves. Melanchthon listened to them agape. He wrote to the
Elector:

I ctn scarcely tell you how deeply I am moved. But who shall judge
them, other than Martin, I do not know. Since the gospel is at stake, ar-
rangements should be made for them to meet with him. They wish it.
I would not have written to you if the matter were not so important.
We must beware lest we resist the Spirit of God, and also lest we be
possessed of the Devil

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THE RETURN OF THE EXILE

But such a disputation with Martin appeared dangerous for him and
disturbing for Wittenberg. She had already enough on her plate, was
the opinion of Spalatin.

Luther in his letters rejected the prophets on religious grounds, be-
cause they talked too glibly.

Those who are expert in spiritual things have gone through the valley
of the shadow. When these men talk of sweetness and of being transported
to the third heaven, do not believe them. Divine Majesty does not speak
directly to men. God is a consuming fire, and the dreams and visions of
the saints are terrible. . . . Prove the spirits; and if you are not able to
do so, then take the advice of Gamaliel and wait.

In another letter he added:

I am sure we can restrain these firebrands without the sword. I hope
the Prince will not imbrue his hands in their blood. I see no reason why on
their account I should come home.

Frederick the Wise was harassed by one eruption after another.
Next came a blow from the right. The noise of the doings at Witten-
berg reached Duke George over the border, and the confessional
cleavage coalesced with the ancient rivalry between the two houses
of Saxony. Luther was soon able to complete his trinity of opposition
as the pope, Duke George, and the DeviL At the moment the duke
was the most active of the three. He was at the Diet of Niimberg and
persuaded the estates to send both to Frederick the Wise and to the
Bishop of Meissen, who had ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the Witten-
berg region, the following instructions:

We have heard that priests celebrate mass in lay habit, omitting essential
portions. They consecrate the holy sacrament in German. The recipients
are not required to have made prior confession. They take the elements
into their own hands and in both kinds. The blood of our Lord is served
not in a chalice but in a mug. The sacrament is given to children. Priests
are dragged from the altars by force. Priests and monks marry, and the
common people are incited to frivolity and offense.

209

HERE I STAND

In response to this communication the Bishop of Meissen requested
of Frederick the Wise permission to conduct a visitation throughout
his domains, and Frederick consented, although making no promises
to discipline offenders. Then on February 13 Frederick issued in-
structions of his own to the university and to the chapter at the
Castle Church.

We have gone too fast. The common man has been incited to frivolity,
and no one has been edified. We should have consideration for the weak.
Images should be left until further notice. The question of begging
should be canvassed. No essential portion of the mass should be omitted.
Moot points should be discussed. Carlstadt should not preach any more,

This document can scarcely be described as a complete abrogation
of the reforms. Frederick simply called a halt and invited further
consideration, but he did emphatically abrogate the city ordinance
of January. If there were to be reforms, he was determined they
should not be by towns but by territories, as in the later German
pattern. Carlstadt submitted and agreed not to preach. Zwilling left
Wittenberg.

THE INVITATION TO COME BACK

But the town council resolved to defy the elector by inviting Martin
Luther to come home. An invitation was sent to him in the name
of "The Council and the entire City of Wittenberg." If the elector
nullified their ordinance, then they would bring back the author
of the whole movement. Probably they expected Luther to exert a
moderating influence. Carlstadt and Zwilling were smoldering fire-
brands. Melanchthon was in a dither, thought of leaving to escape
the radicals, and frankly said, "The dam has broken, and I cannot
sctm the waters." The council knew nowhere to look for leadership
save fca the Wartburg, and without consulting or even informing
the elector invited Luther to return.

He was not unwilling to come, for he had said as early as December
that he had no intention of remaining in hiding longer than Easter.
He would stay until he had finished a volume of sermons and the

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THE RETURN OF THE EXILE

translation of the New Testament. Then he proposed to turn to the
translation of the Old Testament and to settle somewhere in the
neighborhood of Wittenberg in order that he might engage the col-
laboration of colleagues better versed than he in Hebrew. At the time
these scholarly concerns motivated him rather than any desire to
take the wheel at Wittenberg.
But when a direct invitation
came from the town and con-
gregation, that was to him a
call from God.

Luther had the courtesy to
notify the elector of his inten-
tion. Frederick replied that he
realized he had perhaps not
done enough. But what should
he do? He did not wish to go
counter to the will of God, nor
to provoke disorder. The Diet
of Niirnberg and the Bishop of
Meissen threatened intervention.
If Luther should return and the
pope and the emperor should
step in to harm him, the elector
would take it amiss. But if the elector should resist, there would be
great disturbance in the land. So far as his person was concerned,
the elector was prepared to suffer, but he would like to know for
what. If he knew that the cross was from God, he would bear at;
but at Wittenberg no one knew who was the cook and who the
waiter, A new meeting of the diet would take place soon. In the
meantime let Luther lie low. Time might change things greatly.

Luther answered:

I wrote for your sake, not for mine. I was disturbed that the gospel
was brought into disrepute at Wittenberg. If I were not sure that the
gospel is on our side, I would have given up. All the sorrow I have had
is nothing compared to this. I would gladly have paid for this with my

211

FREDERICK THE WISE

HERE I STAND

life, for we can answer neither to God nor to the world for what has
happened. The Devil is at work in this. As for myself, my gospel is not
from men. Concessions bring only contempt. I cannot yield an inch to
the Devil, I have done enough for Your Grace by staying in hiding for
a year. I did not do it through cowardice. The Devil knows I would have
gone into Worms though there were as many devils as tiles on the roo
and I would ride into Leipzig novr, though it rained Duke Georges for
nine days.

I would have you know that I come to Wittenberg 'fcdth a higher
protection than that of Your Grace. I dq not ask you to protect me. I
will protect you more than you will protect me. If I thought you would
protect me, I would not come. This is not a case for the sword but for
God, and since you are weak in the faith you cannot protect me. You ask
what you should do, and think you have done too little. I say you have
done too much, and you should do nothing but leave it to God. You are
excused if I am captured or killed. As a prince you should obey the
emperor and offer no resistance. No one should use force except the
erne who is ordained to use it. Otherwise there is rebellion against God.
But I hope you will not act as my accuser. If you leave the door open,
that is enough. If they try to* make you do more than that, I will then
tell you what to do. If Your Grace had eyes, you would see the glory of
God.

THE RETURN TO WITTENBERG

The return to Wittenberg was incomparably brave. Never before
had Luther stood in such peril. At the interview with Cajetan and at
Worms he had not been under the ban of Church and empire, and
Frederick had been ready to provide asylum. But this time Luther
was made to know that he could count on no protection in case of
extradition by the diet or the emperor. At Worms there had been
a second line of defense in Sickingen, Hutten, and the knights,
This wall was fast crumbling. Sickingen had had the indiscretion
after Worms to embark on an adventure designed to arrest the doom
of German knighthood at the expense of the territorial princes and
bishops. The attack was focused on the prince bishop, Richard of
Greiffenklau, elector and archbishop of Trier. A number of knights
who had earlier proffered help to Luther joined Sickingen, but his
campaign was doomed at the outset, because victims of his former

2X2

THE RETURN OF THE EXILE

depredations raUIed to Trier and corralled Sickingen in one of his
own castles, where he died of wounds. Hutten had been unable to
accompany him on this campaign because he was ill of syphilis at
the Ebernburg. But in intervals of health he had engaged in a foray
on his own, a priests' war he called it, consisting mainly in the sacking
of cloisters. When Sickingen failed, he fled to Switzerland to sizzle
out his meteoric career on an island of Lake Zurich. The knights
who had shared in Sickingen's exploit suffered the confiscation of their
estates. Had Luther relied upon them, they would have proved a
broken reed. But he had long since resolved to trust only to the Lord
of Hosts, who does not always deliver his children from the mouth
of the lion.

A detail of Luther's homeward journey is recorded by a Swiss
chronicler who apologetically introduced into a cryptic history of
die rimes a leisurely description of an experience of his own when
with a companion on the way to Wittenberg he pulled up late ono
night out of the storm at the portal of the Black Bear Inn of a
Thuringian village. The host brought the bedraggled travelers into
a room where sat a knight with a bushy black beard clad in a scarlet
cloak and woolen tights, his hands resting on the hilt of a sword
as he engaged in reading. The knight rose and hospitably invited the
muddy wayfarers to sit and share with him a glass. They noticed
that his book was in Hebrew. They asked him whether he knew
if Luther were in Wittenberg. "I know quite positively that he is
not," said he, "but he will be." Then he inquired what the Swiss
thought of Luther. The host, observing that the pair were well dis-
posed to the reformer, confided to one that the knight was Luther
himself. The Swiss could not believe his ears, thought he must have
mistaken the name for Hutten. On parting the next morning they let
the knight know that they took him for Hutten. "No, he is Luther,"
interposed the host. The knight kughed. "You take me for Hutten.
He takes me for Luther. Maybe I am the Devil." Within a week they
were to meet him again in Wittenberg.

Luther's first concern there was to restore confidence and order.
With stalwart presence and mellifluous voice he mounted the pulpit

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HERE I STAND

to preach patience, charity, and consideration for the weak. He
reminded his hearers that no man can die for another, no man can
believe for another, no man can answer for another. Therefore every
man should be fully persuaded in his own mind. No one can be
intimidated into belief. The violence of those who demolish altars,
smash images, and drag priests by the hair was to Luther a greater
blow than any ever dealt him by the papacy. He was beginning to
realize that perhaps after all he was closer to Rome than to his own
sectaries. He was deeply cut because the predictions of his assailants
that we would be the occasion of "division, war, and insurrection"
were being all too abundantly fulfilled. He pleaded:

Give men time. I took three years of constant study, reflection, and
discussion to arrive where I now am, and can the common man, untutored
in such matters, be expected to move the same distance in three months?
Do not suppose that abuses are eliminated by destroying the object which
is abused. Men can go wrong with wine and women. Shall we then pro-
hibit wine and abolish women? The sun, the moon, and stars have been
worshiped. Shall we then pluck them out of the sky? Such haste and
violence betray a lack of confidence in God. See how much he has been
able to accomplish through me, though I did no more than pray and
preach. The Word did it all. Had I wished I might have started a confla-
gration at Worms. But while I sat still and drank beer with Philip and
Amsdorf, God dealt the papacy a mighty blow.

In response to these appeals Zwilling agreed to give up celebrating
the Lord's Supper with feathers in his beret, and Luther cordially
recommended him to a pastorate at Zwickau, the town from which
tiie prophets had come. Carlstadt took over a congregation in the
neighboring Qrlamunde. Wittenberg was in hand.

Luther then turned to deal with the elector, who desired from him
a statement to be submitted to the Diet at Niirnberg, exculpating
the prince from any complicity in the return from the Wartburg.
Luther gladly complied but in the course of the letter remarked
that things are settled differently in heaven than in Niirnberg.
Frederick suggested that the words "on earth" be substituted for
"in Niirnberg." Luther again complied.

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

No OTHER FOUNDATION

XTERNALLY speaking, Luther had reached the
turning point of his career. The leader of the
opposition was called to be the head of the
government, albeit in a very restricted area.
The demolisher was summoned to build. The
change of course was not absolute because he
had been constructive all along, and to the
end he never ceased to flay the papacy. Never-
theless the change was vast between the role of railing against "the
execrable bull of Antichrist" and that of providing a new pattern
of Church, state, and society, a new constitution for the Church, a
new liturgy, and a new Scripture in the vernacular.

In the accomplishment of this task there were two considerations.
The first had to do with principles which Luther sought to realize
in the concrete, and the second with the people who constituted the
field in which these ideas were to be realized. Luther's views were
for the most part already mature by the time of his return to Witten-
berg. Controversy was to sharpen the emphases. Practical experience
dictated the lines of advance or retrenchment, while long years in
the pulpit and classroom afforded occasion for copious illustration.

Luther's principles in religion and ethics alike must constantly be
borne in mind if he is not at times to appear unintelligible and even
petty. The primary consideration with him was always the pre-
eminence of religion. Into a society where the lesser breed were given
to gaming, roistering, and wenching the Diet of Worms was called
a veritable Venusberg at a time when the choicer sort were glorying

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HERE I STAND

in the accomplishments of man, strode this Luther, entranced by the
song of angels, stunned by the wrath of God, speechless before the
wonder of creation, lyrical over the divine mercy, a man aflame with
God. For such a person there was no question which mattered much
save this: How do I stand before God? Luther would never shirk
a mundane task such as exhorting the elector to repair the city wall
to keep the peasants' pigs from rooting in the villagers' gardens, but
he was never supremely concerned about pigs, gardens, walls, cities,
princes, or any and ail of the blessings and nuisances of this mortal
life. The ultimate problem was always God and man's relationship
to God. For this reason political and social forms were to him a
matter of comparative indifference. Whatever would foster the
understanding, dissemination, and practice of God's Word should
be encouraged, and whatever impeded must be opposed. This is why
it is futile to inquire whether Luther was a democrat, aristocrat,
autocrat, or anything else. Religion was for him the chief end of man,
and all else peripheral.

And the religion which he had in mind was of course the Christian
religion. Everyone in his age would have said that, if for no other
reason than out of national or European pride. But Luther so spoke
because he had experienced a sheer impasse in any other approach
to God than through his own self -disclosure in Jesus Christ. "No other
foundation is laid than has been kid in Jesus Christ our Lord."

NATURE, HISTORY, AND PHILOSOPHY

Nature cannot reveal God. Nature is indeed very wonderful,
and every particle of creation reveals the handiwork of God, if one
has the eyes to see. But that is precisely the difficulty. If one already
believes in the beneficence of God, then one is overcome with amaze-
ment and joy at the trembling of the dawn when night is not yet
day and day is not night but light imperceptibly dispels darkness.
How amazing are the clouds sustained without pillars and the firma-
ment of heaven upheld without columns! How fair are the birds
of heaven and the lilies of the field! "If thou couldst understand a
single grain of wheat, thou wouldst die for wonder." God is in all

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this. He is in every creature, inwardly and outwardly, through and
through, over and under, behind and before, so that nothing can be
more inward and hidden in any creature than God. "In him we live,
and move, and have our being." Without him is naught. God fills all
the world, but by the world he is not contained. "Whither shall I flee
from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I
make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there." But who sees all this?
Only faith and spirit. The trouble with Erasmus is that he is not
stupefied with wonder at the child in the womb. He does not con-
template marriage with reverent amazement, nor praise and thank
God for the marvel of a flower or the bursting of a peach stone by the
swelling seed. He beholds these wonders like a cow staring at a new
door. The deficiency of faith is made evident by a lack of wonder,
for nature is a revelation only to those to whom God has already
been revealed.

It is no better with history, which also cannot reveal God, for the
whole of history appears at first glance to be nothing but a commentary
on the text, "He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and
exalted them of low degree." God suffers the mighty empires to strut
for a time upon the stage Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome.
Then when each becomes too overweening, God places the sword
in the hand of another and releases him to cast down the braggart,
only in turn after his swaggering to be brought low. Here again we
meet with an Augustinian theme, save that for Augustine history
is an illustration of man's lust for domination and of the justice of
God in abasing the arrogant. But Luther wonders whether God is
amusing himself with a puppet show.

Even more disconcerting is the recognition that all too often God
does not cast down the mighty and does not exalt those of low degree.
But he leaves them in their squalor, unrequited and unavenged.
Throughout history it is the saints who are despised and rejected,
maltreated, abused, and trodden under the feet of man. Joseph, for
example, for no adequate reason was seized by his brethren, cast
into the well, sold to the Ishmaelites, and carried as a slave into Egypt.
And there precisely because he was honorable he was besmirched with

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the accusation of adultery and thrown into prison. And the Virgin
Mary, after being informed by the angel Gabriel that she was to be
the mother of the Most High, had to suffer the suspicion of her own
husband. Joseph's situation is understandable, for they had not yet
come together, and she had been three months absent with her cousin
Elisabeth. He could not well put a good construction upon her con-
dition until the angel instructed him in a dream. But why did God
wait to disabuse him until after Mary had been put to shame?

Some of the afflictions which fall upon the just were, in Luther's
view, the work of the Devil, and here he was following the familiar
Augustinian dualism of the eternal conflict between the City of God
and the earthly city through which Satan operates. Luther could in
this way take comfort in tumult because the Devil is bound to assail
the faith, and tumult is the proof that faith is present and under
attack. But it is not always the Devil who is responsible. God is a
God who works through contraries. The Virgin had to be put to
shame before she could come into glory. Joseph had to be humiliated
by false accusation before he could become the prime minister and
savior of Egypt. In such moments God appears hidden. Joseph must
have had a fearful struggle. He would say, "Oh, if I could only get
back to my father," and then he would grip himself and say, "Hold
fast. If only I could find the way out of this dungeon. Hold fast.
What if I die in disgrace in this prison? Hold fast." Such alternations
of anguish and consolation assailed him until he was able to discern
the hand of God.

There is no escaping from the horrors of darkness because God
is such a God "that before he can be God he must first appear to be
the Devil. We cannot reach heaven until we first descend into hell.
We cannot be God's children unless first we are the Devil's children.
Again before the world can be seen to be a lie it must first appear
to be the truth."

It must seem so. Yet God has not really deserted us, but he is hidden,
and by direct searching we cannot find him out. Why God wishes
to hide himself from us we do not know; but this we know: our
nature cannot attain unto his majesty. "David did not speak with the

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absolute God, whom we must^fear if we would not perish, because
human nature and the absolute God are implacable enemies. And it
cannot but be that human nature should be oppressed by such
majesty. Therefore David does not talk with the absolute God but
with God clothed and mantled in the Word."

Neither can philosophy reveal God. In making this assertion Luther
was in part echoing the language of the late scholastics, on whose
works he had been reared. The Occamists had wrecked the synthesis
of Thomas Aquinas whereby nature and reason lead through un-
broken stages to grace and revelation. Instead between nature and
grace, between reason and revelation, these theologies introduced
a great gulf. So much so indeed that philosophy and theology were
compelled to resort to two different kinds of logic and even two
different varieties of arithmetic. The classic illustration was the doc-
trine of the Trinity, which asserts that three persons are one God.
According to human arithmetic this is preposterous, and yet accord-
ing to divine arithmetic it must be believed. Luther at this point
outdid his teachers and asserted that whereas by the standard of human
reason two and five equal seven, yet if God should declare them to
be eight, one must believe against reason and against feeling. All this
Luther could say with his teachers, but such conundrums gave him
little concern.

The inadequacy of philosophy was to him the more apparent and
the more depressing at those points where his master, St. Augustine,
had accentuated the cleavage between the natural man and the re-
deemed man, and had thereby widened at the same time the breach
between natural and revealed religion. Augustine freely conceded
that in some respects man still resembles God, in whose image he was
created. The fall of Adam did not obliterate all the vestiges, but their
meaning is unintelligible to one who is not acquainted with the
original pattern. The late scholastics heightened the point that as
cow tracks in a meadow bespeak a cow only to one who has
previously seen a cow, so the trinitarian structure of man, with
intellect, memory, and will, bespeaks the trinitarian structure of
God only to one to whom the doctrine has already been revealed.

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Luther took over this whole manner of thinking and applied
it in a much more drastic and poignant way, because for him the prob-
lems were not so much metaphysical as religious. The crucial point was
not as to the structure of God but as to the character of God. His
structure remains an insoluble mystery into which we were wiser
not to pry, but we must ask, Is he good? Is he just? Is he good to me?
Augustine's heart was no longer restless after he had received the
yoke that is easy. But Luther never ceased to revolve these old
tormenting queries.

CHRIST THE SOLE REVEALER

For his answer he was driven to seek God where he has chosen
to make himself known, namely in the flesh of Jesus Christ our Lord,
who is the sole revealer of God.

The prophet Isaiah said, "The people that walked in darkness have
seen a great light." Don't you think that this is an inexpressible light
which enables us to see the heart of God and the depth of the Godhead?
And that we may also see the thoughts of the Devil and what sin is and
how to be freed from it and what death is and how to be delivered. And
what man is, and the world, and how to conduct oneself in it. No one
before was sure what God is or whether there are devils, what sin and
death are, let alone how to be delivered. This is all the work of Christ,
and in this passage he is called Mighty and Wonderful.

He is the sole redeemer of man from the thralldona of sin and the gates
of death. He alone is the hope of any enduring society upon earth. Where
men do not know Bethlehem's babe they rave and rage and strive. The
angels proclaimed peace on earth, and so shall it be to those who know
and receive this Babe. For what is it like where Jesus Christ is not? What
is the world if not a perfect hell with nothing but lying, cheating, glut-
tony, guzzling, lechery, brawling, and murder. That is the very Devil
himself. There is no kindliness nor honor. No one is sure of another. One
must be as distrustful of friends as of enemies, and sometimes more. This
is the kingdom of the world where the Devil reigns and rules. But the
angels show in their song that those who know and accept the Child Jesus
not only give honor to God but treat their fellow men as if they were
gods, with peaceable demeanor, glad to help and counsel any man. They
are free from envy and wrangling, for the Christian way is quiet and

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friendly in peace and brotherly love where each gladly does the best
he can for another.

All then would seem to be simple. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,
and thou shalt be saved," but faith in Christ is far from simple and
easy because he is an astounding king, who, instead of defending his
people, deserts them. Whom he would save he must first make a
despairing sinner. Whom he would make wise he must first turn
into a fool. Whom he would make alive he must first kill. Whom he
would bring to honor he must first bring into dishonor. He is a strange
king who is nearest when he is far and farthest when he is near.

The attempt of Erasmus to make Christianity simple and easy
was to Luther utterly vain because Christ must so deeply offend.
Man's corruption must be assailed before ever his eyes can be opened.
One of Luther's students recorded:

On Christmas eve of 1538 Dr. Martin Luther was very jocund. All his
words and songs and thoughts were of the incarnation of our Lord. Then
with a sigh he said, "Oh, we poor men that we should be so cold and
indifferent to this great joy which has been given us. This indeed is the
greatest gift, which far exceeds all else that God has created. And we
believe so feebly even though the angels proclaim and preach and sing,
and their song is fair and sums up the whole Christian religion, for 'glory
to God in the highest' is the very heart of worship. This they wish for
us and bring to us in Christ. For the world, since Adam's fall, knows
neither God nor his creatures. Oh, what fine, fair, happy thoughts would
man have had were he not fallen! How he would have meditated upon
God in all creatures, that he should see in the smallest and meanest flower
God's omnipotent wisdom and goodness! Every tree and branch would
have been more esteemed than if it were gold or silver. And properly con-
sidered every green tree is lovelier than gold and silver. Surely the contem-
plation of the whole creation, and especially of the simplest grasses of the
fields and the adornment of the earth, proves that our Lord God is an
artist like unto none. Adam and his children would have gloried in all
this, but now since the pitiable fall the Creator is dishonored and reviled.
That is why the dear angels summon fallen men once more to faith in
Christ and to love that they may give to God alone the honor and may
dwell in this life in peace with God and one another."

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The reason why faith is so hard and reason so inadequate is a prob-
lem far deeper than logic. Luther often railed at reason, and he has
been portrayed in consequence as a complete irrationalist in religion.
This is quite to mistake his meaning. Reason in the sense of logic he
employed to the uttermost limits. At Worms and often elsewhere
he asked to be instructed from Scripture and reason. In this sense reason
meant logical deduction from known premises; and when Luther
railed against the harlot reason, he meant something else. Common
sense is perhaps a better translation. He had in mind the way in which
man ordinarily behaves, feels, and thinks. It is not what God says
that is a foreign tongue, but what God does that is utterly incom-
prehensible.

When I am told that God became man, I can follow the idea, but I
just do not understand what it means. For what man, if left to his natural
promptings, if he were God, would humble himself to lie in the feedbox
of a donkey or to hang upon a cross? God laid upon Christ the iniquities
of us all.

This is that ineffable and infinite mercy of God which the slender
capacity of man's heart cannot comprehend and much less utter that
unfathomable depth and burning zeal of God's love toward us. And
truly the magnitude of God's mercy engenders in us not only a hardness
to believe but also incredulity itself. For I hear not only that the omnipo-
tent God, the creator and maker of all things, is good and merciful, but
also that the Supreme Majesty was so concerned for me, a lost sinner, a
son of wrath and of everlasting death, that he spared not his own Son but
delivered him to the most ignominious death, that, hanging between two
thieves, he might be made a curse and sin for me, a cursed sinner, that
I might be made just, blessed, a son and heir of God. Who can sufficiently
declare this exceeding great goodness of God? Therefore the holy
Scripture speaks of far other than philosophical or political matters, namely
of the unspeakable and utterly divine gifts, which far surpass the capacity
both of men and of angels.

In God alone can man ever find peace. God can be known only
through Christ, but how lay hold on Christ when his ways are like-
wise so incredible? The answer is not by sight but by faith which

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walks gaily into the darkness. Yet once again, how shall one come by;
this faith? It is a gift of God. By no act of will can it be induced,

THE WORD AND THE SACRAMENTS

No, but man is not left entirely without recourse. He can expose
himself to those channels of self-disclosure which God has ordained.
They are all summed up in the Word. It is not to be equated with
Scripture nor with the sacraments, yet it operates through them and
not apart from them. The Word is not the Bible as a written book be-
cause "the gospel is really not that which is contained in books and
composed in letters, but rather an oral preaching and a living word, a
voice which resounds throughout the whole world and is publicly
proclaimed." This Word must be heard. This Word must be pon-
dered. "Not through thought, wisdom, and will does the faith of
Christ arise in us, but through an incomprehensible and hidden oper-
ation of the Spirit, which is given by faith in Christ only at the hearing
of the Word and without any other work of ours." More, too, than
mere reading is required. "No one is taught through much reading and
thinking. There is a much higher school where one learns God's Word.
One must go into the wilderness. Then Christ comes and one becomes
able to judge the world."

Likewise faith is given to those who avail themselves of those out-
ward rites which again God has ordained as organs of revelation, the
sacraments.

For although he is everywhere and in all creatures and I may find him
in stone, fire, water, or rope, since he is assuredly there, yet he does not
wish me to seek him apart from the Word, that I should throw myself
into fire or water or hang myself with a rope. He is everywhere, but
he does not desire that you should seek everywhere but only where the
Word is. There if you seek him you will truly find, namely in the Word.
These people do not know and see who say that it doesn't make sense
that Christ should be in bread and wine. Of course Christ is with me in
prison and the martyr's death, else where should I be? He is truly present
there with the Word, yet not in the same sense as in the sacrament, be-
caxise he has attached his body and blood to the Word and in bread and
wine is bodily to be received.

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These were Luther's religious principles: that religion is paramount,
that Christianity is the sole true religion to be apprehended by faith
channeled through Scripture, preaching, and sacrament.

The practical deductions from such a view are obvious. All insti-
tutions must accord to religion the right of way. The study of Scrip-
ture must be cultivated in church and school. In church the pulpit and
the altar must each sustain the other.

Still further consequences of a less tangible sort were implicit. If
religion is so central, then all human relations must be conditioned by
it. Alliances, friendships, and matings will be secure only if grounded
in a common faith. Contemporaries were sometimes appalled that
Luther would disrupt human relations or churchly unities over a
single point of doctrine. To which he replied that he might as well be
told it was unreasonable to sever friendship over the single point of
strangling his wife or child. To deny God in one point is to attack God
in all.

Again the exclusiveness which Luther assigned to Christianity was
bound to entail a sentence of rejection upon other religions such as
Judaism. He might or he might not be charitable to the worshipers of
false gods, but their error he could never condone. Neither could he
feel leniently disposed toward those who disparaged or in his judg-
ment misinterpreted the Scripture and the sacraments.
/

THE MENACE TO MORALS /

In the field of morals many felt that his preoccupation with re-
ligion was dangerous. Particularly his insistence that upright conduct
constitutes no claim upon God was believed to undercut the most
potent motive for good behavior. The same retort was given to Lu-
ther as to Paul. If we are saved not by merit but by mercy, "let us
then sin that grace may abound/' Both Paul and Luther answered,
"God forbid." And anyone who had followed Luther closely would
have known that he was far from indifferent to morality. Neverthe-
less the charge was not altogether perverse. Luther did say things at
times which emphatically sounded subversive to morals. The classic
example is the notorious pecca fortitcr, "Sin for all you are worth.

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HERE I STAND

God can forgive only a lusty sinner." To make this the epitome of
Luther's ethic is grossly unfair because it was a piece of uproarious
chaffing of the anemic Melanchthon, who was in a dither over scruples
of conscience. Luther's counsel was essentially the same as that given
to him by Staupitz, who told him that before coming so frequently
to the confessional he should go out and commit a real sin like parri-
cide. Staupitz was certainly not advising Luther to murder his father,
and Luther well knew that his jest would not induce the impeccable
Melanchthon to jettison the Ten Commandments. Luther was saying
merely that it might do him good for once to spoil his record.

This is a point which Luther did make at times, that one sin is needed
as medicine to cure another. An unblemished record engenders the
worst of all sins, pride. Hence a failure now and then is conducive
to humility. But the only sins which Luther actually recommended
as record spoilers were a little overeating, overdrinking, and oversleep-
ing. Such controlled excesses might be utilized as the antidote to ar-
rogance.

He did say something else with an unethical ring, however, namely,
that good works without faith "are idle, damnable sins." Erasmus was
horrified to hear integrity and decency so stigmatized. But Luther
never meant to say that from the social point of view decency is no
better than indecency. What he meant was that the decency of the
man who behaves himself simply for fear of damaging his reputation
is in the eyes of God an idle, damnable sin, and far worse than the in-
decency of the contrite offender. Luther's statement is nothing more
than a characteristically paradoxical version of the parable of the
penitent publican.

But perhaps the deepest menace of Luther to morals lay in his
rescue of morals. He would suffer no attenuation of the appalling
demands of the New Testament. Christ said, "Give away your cloak,
take no thought for the morrow, when struck turn the other cheek,
sell all and give to the poor, forsake father and mother, wife and
child." The Catholic Church of the Middle Ages had several devices
for attenuating the inexorable. One was to make a distinction between
Christians and to assign only to heroic souls the more arduous injunc-

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tions of the gospel. The counsels of perfection were consigned to
monasticism. Luther closed this door by abolishing monasticism. An-
other distinction was between the continuous and the customary.
Strenuous Christians should love God and the neighbor uninterrupted-
ly, but ordinary Christians only ordinarily. Luther was scornful of
all such casuistry; and when reminded that without it the precepts
of the gospel are impossible, he would retort, "Of course they are.
God commands the impossible." But then comes again the old ques-
tion, If the goal cannot be reached, why make the effort?

Here one must be clear as to precisely how much Luther meant by
calling the goal unattainable. He very clearly meant that the noblest
human achievement will fall short in the eyes of God. All men are
sinners. But they are not for that reason all rascals. A certain level of
morality is not out of reach. Even the Jews, the Turks, and the heathen
are able to keep the natural law embodied in the Ten Commandments.

"Thou shalt not steal" should be placed by the miller on his sack, the
baker on his bread, the shoemaker on his last, the tailor on his cloth, and
the carpenter on his ax.

Temptations of course cannot be avoided, but because we cannot pre-
vent the birds from flying over our heads, there is no need that we
should let them nest in our hair.

There is then a wide basis for genuine moral conduct even apart from
Christianity.

But once more the danger to ethics arises because all this is not
enough. God demands not only acts but attitudes. He is like the
mother who asks her daughter to cook or to milk the cow. The daugh-
ter may comply gaily or grudgingly. Not only does God require
that we refrain from adultery, but he exacts purity of thought and
restraint within marriage. These are the standards to which we cannot
attain. "A horse can be controlled with a golden bit, but who can con-
trol himself at those points where he is vitally touched?" Even our
very quest for God is a disguised form of self-seeking. The pursuit
of perfection is all the more hopeless because the goal is recessive.
Every act of goodness opens the door for another; and if we do not

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enter in, we have failed. Hence all righteousness of the moment is sin
with respect to that which must be added in the following instant.
Even more disconcerting is the discovery that we are guilty of sins
of which we are not aware. Luther had learned in the confessional the
difficulty of remembering or recognizing his shortcomings. The very
recognition that we are sinners is an act of faith. "By faith alone it
must be believed that we are sinners, and indeed more often than not
we seem to know nothing against ourselves. Wherefore we must
stand by God's judgment and believe his words by which he calls us
unrighteous."

THE GROUND OF GOODNESS

Once again Luther's critics arise to inquire whether if man in the
end has no standing with God he should make the effort to be good.
Luther's answer is that morality must be grounded somewhere else
than in self-help and the quest for reward. The paradox is that God
must destroy in us all illusions of righteousness before he can make
us righteous. First we must relinquish all claim to goodness. The way
to eliminate feelings of guilt is to admit guilt. Then there is some hope
for us. "We are sinners and at the same time righteous" which is to
say that however bad we are, there is a power at work in us which
can and will make something out of us.

This is wonderful news to believe that salvation lies outside ourselves.
I am justified and acceptable to God, although there are in me sin, un-
righteousness, and horror of death. Yet I must look elsewhere and see
no sin. This is wonderful, not to see what I see, not to feel what I feel.
Before my eyes I see a gulden, or a sword, or a fire, and I must say, "There
is no gulden, no sword, no fire." The forgiveness of sins is like this.

And the effect of it is that the forgiven, unpretentious sinner has
vastly more potentialities than the proud saint.

The righteousness of the sinner is no fiction. It must and it will
produce good works, but they can never be good if done for their
own sake. They must spring from the fount of the new man. "Good
works do not make a man good, but a good man does good works."

228

TITLE PAGE OF "On THE FREEDOM OF THE CHRISTIAN MAN"

HERE I STAND

Luther variously described the ground of goodness. Sometimes he
would say that all morality is gratitude. It is the irrepressible expres-
sion of thankfulness for food and raiment, for earth and sky, and for
the inestimable gift of redemption. Again morality is the fruit of the
spirit dwelling in the heart of the Christian. Or morality is the behavior
becoming the nature of one united with Christ as the bride with the
bridegroom. As there is no need to tell lovers what to do and say, so is
there no need for any rules to those who are in love with Christ. The
only word that covers all this is faith. It removes all the inhibitions
arising from worry and sets man in such a relationship to God and
Christ that all else will come of itself.

Nowhere does Luther set forth his views in more rugged and glow-
ing \\jords than in the canticle On the 'Freedom of the Christian Man.

The soul which with a firm faith cleaves to the promises of God is
united with them, absorbed by them, penetrated, saturated, inebriated by
their power. If the touch of Christ was healing, how much more does that
most tender touch in the spirit, that absorption in the Word convey to
the soul all the qualities of the Word so that it becomes trustworthy,
peaceable, free, full of every good, a true child of God. From this we see
very easily why faith can do so much and no good work is like unto it,
for no good work comes from God's Word like faith. No good work can
be within the soul, but the Word and faith reign there. What the Word
is that the soul is, as iron becomes fire-red through union with the flame.
Plainly then faith is enough for the Christian man. He has no need for
works to be made just. Then is he free from the law.

But he is not therefore to be lazy or loose. Good works do not make
a man good, but a good man does good works. A bishop is not a bishop be-
cause he consecrates a church, but he consecrates a church because he is
a bishop. Unless a man is already a believer and a Christian, his works have
no value at all. They are foolish, idle, damnable sins, because when good
works are brought forward as ground for justification, they are no longer
good. Understand that we do not reject good works, but praise them
highly. The apostle Paul said, "Let this mind be in you which was
also in Christ Jesus, who being on an equality with God emptied himself,
taking the form of a servant, and becoming obedient unto death." Paul
means that when Christ was fully in the form of God, abounding in all
things, so that he had no need of any work or any suffering to be saved,

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NO OTHER FOUNDATION

he was not puffed up, did not arrogate to himself power, but rather in
suffering, working, enduring, and dying made himself like other men,
as if he needed all things and were not in the form of God. All this he did
to serve us. When God in his sheer mercy and without any merit of mine
has given me such unspeakable riches, shall I not then freely, joyously,
wholeheartedly, unprompted do everything that I know will please him?
I will give myself as a sort of Christ to my neighbor as Christ gave him-
self for me.

This is the word which ought to be placarded as the epitome of
Luther's ethic, that a Christian must be a Christ to his neighbor. Lu-
ther goes on to explain what this entails.

I must even take to myself the sins of others as Christ took mine to
himself. Thus we see that the Christian man lives not to himself but to
Christ and his neighbor through love. By faith he rises above himself to
God and from God goes below himself in love and remains always in
God and in love.

Where will one find a nobler restoration of ethics, and where will one
find anything more devastating to ethics? The Christian man is so to
identify himself with his neighbor as to take to himself sins that he
has not personally committed. The parents assume the sins of the
children, the citizens the sins of the state. Luther's scorn was directed
against making the chief end of man to keep the record clean. The
Christian, like Christ, must in some sense become sin with and for
the sinner, and like Christ share in the alienation of those who through
sin are separated from God.

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

REBUILDING THE WALLS

HE REBUILDING of the walls of Jerusalem by
Ezra and Nehemiah is quaintly illustrated in
Luther's German Bible by a woodcut in which
the theme is from the Old Testament and the
scenery from Saxony. The rebuilders of the
walls are the Jews returned from Babylon.
The stones, mortar, logs, saws, wheelbarrows,
inclined planes, and derricks are precisely
those employed to repair the walls of Wittenberg. Very similar was
Luther's application of Christian principles to the reconstruction of
society. The pre-eminence of religion, the sole sufficiency of Chris-
tianity, the obligation of the Christian to be a Christ to the neighbor
these were the principles. The applications were conservative. Lu-
ther came not to destroy, but to fulfill, and against all misconception
of his teaching sought to make plain that the traditional Christian
ethic remained intact. The Sermon on Good Works is built, not
around the Beatitudes, but around the Ten Commandments, the core
of the law of Moses equated with the law of nature. Like those before
him Luther extended the command to honor father and mother to
include reverence for all in authority, such as bishops, teachers, and
magistrates. His domestic ethic was Pauline and patriarchal, the eco-
nomic ethic Thomistic and mainly agrarian, the political ethic Au-
gustinian and small town.

THE CALLINGS

In one respect Luther was more conservative than Catholicism be-
cause he abolished monasticism and thus eliminated a selected area

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REBUILDING THE WALLS

for the practice of the higher righteousness. In consequence the gospel
could be exemplified only in the midst of secular callings, except that
Luther refused to call them secular. As he had extended the priest-
hood of all believers, so likewise he extended the concept of divine
calling, vocation, to all worthy occupations.

Our expression "vocational guidance" comes directly from Luther.
God has called men to labor because he labors. He works at common
occupations. God is a tailor who makes for the deer a coat that will
last for a thousand years. He is a shoemaker also who provides boots
that the deer will not outlive. God is the best cook, because the heat
of the sun supplies all the heat there is for cooking. God is a butler
who sets forth a feast for the sparrows and spends on them annually
more than the total revenue of the king of France. Christ worked as
a carpenter. "I can just imagine," said Luther from the pulpit, "the
people of Nazareth at the judgment day. They will come up to the
Master and say, 'Lord, didn't you build my house? How did you come

REBUILDING THE WALLS OF JERUSALEM
233

HERE I STAND

to this honor?' " The Virgin Mary worked, and the most amazing
example of her humility is that after she had received the astonishing
news that she was to be the mother of the Redeemer, she did not vaunt
herself but went back and milked the cows, scoured the kettles, and
swept the house like any housemaid. Peter worked as a fisherman and
was proud of his skill, though not too proud to take a suggestion from
the Master when he told hkn to cast on the other side. Luther com-
mented:

I would have said, "Now look here, Master. You are a preacher, and
I am not undertaking to tell you how to preach. And I am a fisherman,
and you need not tell me how to fish." But Peter was humble, and the
Lord therefore made him a fisher of men.

The shepherds worked. They had a mean job watching their flocks
by night, but after seeing the babe they went back.

Surely that must be wrong. We should correct the passage to read,
"They went and shaved their heads, fasted, told their rosaries, and put
on cowls." Instead we read, "The shepherds returned." Where to? To
their sheep. The sheep would have been in a sorry way if they had not.

As God, Christ, the Virgin, the prince of the apostles, and the shep-
herds labored, even so must we labor in our callings. God has no
hands and feet of his own. He must continue his labors through hu-
man instruments. The lowlier the task the better. The milkmaid and
the carter of manure are doing a work more pleasing to God than
the psalm singing of a Carthusian. Luther never tired of defending
those callings which for one reason or another were disparaged. The
mother was considered lower than the virgin. Luther replied that the
mother exhibits the pattern of the love of God, which overcomes sins
just as her love overcomes dirty diapers.

Workers with brawn are prone to despise workers with brain, such
as city secretaries and schoolteachers. The soldier boasts that it is hard
work to ride in armor and endure heat, frost, dust, and thirst. But I'd like
to see a horseman who could sit the whole day and look into a book. It

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REBUILDING THE WALLS

is no great trick to hang two legs over a horse. They say writing is just
pushing a feather, but I notice that they hang swords on their hips and
feathers in high honor on their hats. Writing occupies not just the fist

A FATHER OF A HOUSEHOLD AT WORK

or the foot while the rest of the body can be singing or jesting, but
the whole man. As for schoolteaching, it is so strenuous chat no one
ought to be bound to it for more than ten years.

Luther preferred to center his social thinking around the callings and
to deal with men where they were in their stations, but he could not
well treat all occupations in a purely personal way without regard to
wider contexts. Luther recognized three broad areas of human re-
lations, all 6f them good because instituted by God at the creation
prior to the fall of man. These three are the ecclesiastical, the political,
and the domestic, including the economic, which Luther conceived

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HERE I STAND

primarily in terms of raising a family. Among these only the ec-
clesiastical engaged his theoretical thinking in any detail. The state
was for him ordinarily simply the magistrate, though he did envisage
the state as an association for mutual benefit, and in view of the fall
of man as that institution which is peculiarly invested with the exercise
of coercive power. In the realm of economics he considered less ab-
stract laws of supply and demand than the personal relations of buyer
and seller, debtor and creditor. His views with regard to marriage
and the family will be considered later.

ECONOMICS

In the economic sphere Luther was as conservative in the same
sense as in the theological. In both he charged the Church of his day
with innovation and summoned his contemporaries to return to the
New Testament and to the early Middle Ages. The new Europe after
the barbarian invasions had been agrarian, and the Church had be-
stowed the highest esteem on agriculture, next on handicraft, and last
of all on commerce. This too was Luther's scale of values. He was
not hospitable to the changes introduced by the Crusades, which re-
covered the Mediterranean for
Christian trade and thus gave
an immense stimulus to com-
merce. The altered situation
greatly affected the propriety
of lending at interest. When
a loan was of food stuffs in a
famine of the early Middle
Ages, any replacement in ex-
cess of the goods consumed
appeared to be extortion. But
in a commercial venture for
profit the case was different.
St. Thomas saw this and sanc-
tioned a sharing in profit by

FROM TITLE PAGE OF LUTHER'S TRACT
"ON USURY"

236

the lender provided there was

REBUILDING THE WALLS

also a sharing in loss. A contract of mutual risk was acceptable but not
a contract of fixed return which would give to Shylock his ducats
even though the ships of Antonio were on the rocks. In the age of the
Renaissance, however, adventurers preferred a higher stake and bank-
ers a more assured though lower return. The Church was ready to
accommodate them both because she herself was so intimately in-
volved in the whole process of the rise of capitalism, with banking,
bookkeeping, credit, and loans. The Fuggers were not begrudged the
services of the theologian John Eck to defend for a subsidy all the
casuistic devices for evading the medieval and Thomistic restrictions
on interest.

Luther on the other hand became the champion of the precapitalist
economy. How agrarian was his thinking is vividly exemplified in a
cartoon on the title page of his tract on usury, in which a
peasant is shown in the act of returning not only the goose which
he had borrowed but also the eggs. Luther took his stand on the
Deuteronomic prohibition of usury and the Aristotelian theory of the
sterility of money. One gulden, said Luther, cannot produce an-
other. The only way to make money is to work. Monastic idle-
ness is a stench. If Adam had never fallen, he would still have
worked at tilling and hunting. Begging should be abolished.
Those who cannot protect themselves should be maintained by
the community and the rest should work. There is but one ex-
ception. The aged with available funds may loan at interest not in
excess of 5 per cent or less, depending on the success of the enter-
prise. That is, Luther retained the contract of mutual risk. Otherwise
loans for him came under the head of charity; and Luther, despite
his contempt for the Franciscan vow of poverty, was himself Francis-
can in the prodigality of his giving.

Obviously Luther was opposed to the spirit of capitalism, and naive-
ly attributed the rise of prices to the rapacity of the capitalists. At the
same time he contributed himself unwittingly to the developments
which he deplored. The abolition of monasticism and the expropriation
of ecclesiastical goods, the branding of poverty as either a sin or at least

237

HERE I STAND

a misfortune if not a disgrace, and the exaltation of work as the imita-
tion of God stimulated distinctly the spirit of economic enterprise*

POLITICS

With regard to the state one must bear in mind that Luther was not
primarily interested in politics, but in his position he could not avoid
politics. Concrete situations pressed upon him, and he offered prompt
comments. Emperor Charles forbade his New Testament intolerable!
Elector Frederick protected his cause and his person admissible! The
papacy deposed heretical rulers usurpation! The Church fomented
crusades abomination! The sectaries rejected all government the
very devil! When Luther came to construct a theory of government,
he relied, as in theology, on Paul and Augustine.

The point of departure for all Christian political thinking has been
the thirteenth chapter of Romans, where obedience is enjoined to the
higher powers because they are ordained of God and bear not the
sword in vain that as ministers of God they may execute wrath upon
evildoers. Luther was perfectly clear that coercion can never be
eliminated because society can never be Christianized.

The world and the masses are and always will be unchristian, although
they are baptized and nominally Christian. Hence a man who would
venture to govern an entire community or the world with the gospel
would be like a shepherd who should place in one fold wolves, lions,
eagles, and sheep. The sheep would keep the peace, but they would not
last long. The world cannot be ruled with a rosary.

The sword to which Luther referred meant for him the exercise of
restraint in preserving the peace both within and without the state.
The police power in his day was not differentiated from war, and the
soldier had a dual function.

In the use of the sword the ruler and his men act as the instruments
of God. "Those who sit in the office of magistrate sit in the place of
God, and their judgment is as if God judged from heaven." "If the
emperor calls me/' said Luther when invited to Worms, "God calls
me." This would seem to settle the question that a Christian can serve

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REBUILDING THE WALLS

as magistrate, but not necessarily, because God can make use of the
worst sinners as his instruments, just as he employed the Assyrian as
the rod of his anger. And in any case Christianity is not necessary for
a sound political administration because politics belongs to the sphere
of nature. Luther combined a denial of man's perfectibility with a
sober faith in man's essential decency. It is perfectly true that men
if unrestrained will devour each other like fishes, but equally is it true
that all men recognize by the light of reason that murder, theft, and
adultery are wrong. The propriety of gradations within society ap-
peared to Luther equally obvious. "I do not need the Holy Spirit to
tell me that the Archbishop of Mainz sits higher than the Bishop of
Brandenburg." Reason in its own sphere is quite adequate to tell a
man how to tend cows, build houses, and govern states. It is even "re-
ported that there is no better government on earth than under the
Turks, who have neither civil nor canon law but only the Koran."
The natural man can be trusted to recognize and administer justice
provided he operates within the framework of law and government
and does not seek to vindicate himself. In that case he cannot be trusted.
"If the magistrate allows any private feeling to enter in, then he is the
very devil. He has a right to seek redress in an orderly way, but not to
avenge himself by using the keys of his office."

But if under such conditions the non-Christian may perfectly well
administer the state, why should a Christian be a statesman? And if the
state is ordained because of sin, why not let sinners run it while the
saints as a whole adopt the code of monks and renounce all exercise of
the sword? To these questions Luther replied that if the Christian is
involved for himself alone, he should suffer himself to be despoiled,
but he has no right to make the same renuncktion for his neighbor.
This sounds as if Luther were saying that the ethical code of the
Christian community should be set by the weaker members. The
Christian who for himself would renounce protection must ensure
justice to others. If the Christian abstains, the government may not
be strong enough to afford the necessary protection. Not for himself
then, but out of love for the neighbor the Christian accepts and up-
holds the office of the sword,

239

HERE I STAND

Is he not then involved in a double ethic? The charge has been
leveled against Luther that he relegated the Christian ethic to private
life and turned over the state to the Devil. This is a gross misunder-
standing of his position. His distinction was not between private and
public, but between individual and corporate. The point was that a
man cannot act so blithely when responsible for wife, child, pupils,
parishioners, and subjects as if involved only for himself. One has no
right to forego rights if they are other people's rights. The line was
not between the state and all other institutions, because Luther placed
the family on the side of the state and classed the father with the
magistrate as equally bound to exercise severity, however much the
methods might differ. One can say that Luther consigned the literal
observance of the Sermon on the Mount to individual relations. He
would not have the private man defend himself. Perhaps by a miracle
one could do so in a disinterested spirit, but the course is very hazard-
ous. Further must it be recognized that the distinction between in-
dividual and corporate does not exhaust . Luther's categories. The
minister also might not use the sword, not for himself or anybody else
because of a different office. The magistrate uses the sword, the
father uses the fist, the minister uses the tongue. In other words,
there are varying codes of behavior according to the callings. In all
this, Luther was drawing from and simplifying St. Augustine, who
in his ethic of war had posited four categories: that of the magistrate,
who determines the justice of the cause and declares hostilities; that
of the private citizen, who wields the sword only at the magistrate's
behest; that of the minister, who abstains from the sword because of
his service at the altar; and that of the monk, who abstains because
dedicated to the counsels of perfection. Luther accepted these cate-
gories with the omission of the monk.

But for all the codes there must be only one disposition. The unify-
ing factor is the attitude of Christian love. This is the sense in which
the Sermon on the Mount applies in all relations, even in war, because
the killing of the body in the eyes of Augustine and Luther was not
incompatible with love. Slaying and robbing in war are to be com-
pared to the amputation of a limb to save a life. Since the exercise of

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REBUILDING THE WALLS

the sword is necessary for the maintenance of peace, war may be re-
garded as a small misfortune designed to prevent a greater. But then
Luther would shift the problem from man to God.

When a magistrate condemns to death a man who has done him no
harm, he is not his enemy. He does this at God's behest. There should
be no anger or bitterness in the man's heart, but only the wrath and
sword of God. Also in war, where in defense one has to hew, stab, and
burn, there is sheer wrath and vengeance, but it does not come from the
heart of man but from the judgment and command of God.

Luther's problem was thus ultimately theological. He believed that
God had drowned the whole human race in a flood, had wiped out
Sodom with fire, and had extinguished lands, peoples, and empires.
God's behavior forces one to conclude that he is almighty and fright-
ful. But this is the hidden God, and faith holds that at the last his
severities will appear as mercies. "Therefore the civil sword out of
great mercy must be unmerciful and out of sheer goodness must
exercise wrath and severity." The dualism does not lie in any outward
sphere but in the heart of God and man. Hence the office of the magis-
trate must be fraught with sadness. "The godly judge is distressed by
the condemnation of the guilty and is truly sorry for the death which
justice brings upon them." "The executioner will say, 'Dear God, I
kill a man unwillingly, for in thy sight I am no more godly than he.' "

CHURCH AND STATE

With regard to the relations of Church and state, the matter is
complicated because Luther introduced two other entities not to be
equated with either. He called them the Kingdom of Christ and the
Kingdom of the World. Neither actually exists on earth. They are
rather contrary principles, like Augustine's City of God and City of
the Earth. The Kingdom of Christ is the way men behave when
actuated by the spirit of Christ, in which case they have no need for
laws and swords. Such a society, however, is nowhere in evidence,
not even in the Church itself, which contains the tares along with
the wheat. And the Kingdom of the World is the way men behave

241

HERE I STAND

when not restrained by law and government. But as a matter of fact
they are so restrained. Church and state, then, are not to be identified
with the Kingdom of Christ and the Kingdom of the World, but
Church and state are both rent by the tugging of the demonic and
the divine.

The demarcation of the spheres of Church and state corresponds in
a rough way to dualisms running through the nature of God and man.
God is wrath and mercy. The state is the instrument of his wrath,
the Church of his mercy. Man is divided into outward and inward.
Crime is outward and belongs to the state. Sin is inward and belongs
to the Church. Goods are outward and fall to the state. Faith is in-
ward and falls to the Church, because

faith is a free work to which no one can be forced. Heresy is a spiritual
matter and cannot be prevented by constraint. Force may avail either
to strengthen alike faith and heresy, or to break down integrity and turn
a heretic into a hypocrite who confesses with his lips what he does not
believe in his heart. Better to let men err than to drive them to lie.

The most important distinction for Luther's political thought was
between the lower and the higher capacities of man, corresponding
to nature and reason on the one hand and to grace and revelation on
the other. The natural man, when not involved for himself, has enough
integrity and insight to administer the state in accord with justice,
equity, and even magnanimity. These are the civil virtues. But the
Church inculcates humility, patience, long-suffering, and charity
the Christian virtues attainable even approximately only by those
endowed with grace, and consequently not to be expected from the
masses. That is why society cannot be ruled by the gospel. And that
is why theocracy is out of the question. Then again there are different
levels involved. The God of the state is the God of the Magnificat,
who exalts the lowly and abases the proud. The God of the Church
is the God of Gethsemane, who suffered at the hands of men without
retaliation or reviling and refused the use of the sword on his behalf.

These distinctions all point in the direction of the separation of

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REBUILDING THE WALLS

Church and state. But on the other hand Luther did not split God and
did not split man. And if he did not contemplate a Christianized so-
ciety, he was not resigned to a secularized culture. The Church must
run the risk of dilution rather than leave the state to the cold light of
reason, unwarmed by tenderness. Of course if the magistrate were
not a Christian, separation would be the obvious recourse. But if he
were a convinced church member, the Church should not disdain his
help in making the benefits of religion accessible to the whole popu-
lace. The magistrate should be the nursing father of the Church. Such
a parallelism is reminiscent of the dream of Dante, never actually
realized in practice, because, where Church and state are allied, one
always dominates, and the outcome is either theocracy or caesaropap-
ism. Luther declined to separate Church and state, repudiated the-
ocracy, and thereby left the door open for caesaropapism, however
remote this was from his intent.

He has been accused of fostering political absolutism, of leaving
the citizen without redress against tyranny, of surrendering conscience
to the state, and of making the Church servile to the powers that be.
These accusations rest upon a modicum of truth, because Luther did
inculcate reverence for government and discountenanced rebellion.
He was the more emphatic because he was accused by the papists of
subversiveness to government. He countered with characteristic ex-
aggeration which left him open on the other side to the charge of
subservience. "The magistracy," said he, "has never been so praised
since the days of the apostles as by me" by which he meant that
none had so stoutly withstood ecclesiastical encroachments. Christ
himself, affirmed Luther, renounced any theocratic intentions by al-
lowing himself to be born when a decree went out from Augustus
Caesar. In most unqualified terms Luther repudiated rebellion because
if the mob breaks loose, instead of one tyrant there will be a hundred.
At this point he was endorsing the view of St. Thomas that tyranny
is to be ended by insurrection only if the violence will presumably do
less damage than the evil which it seeks to correct.

All of which is not to say that Luther left the oppressed without

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HERE I STAND

recourse. They had prayer, which Luther did not esteem lightly, and
they had the right of appeal. Feudal society was graded, and every
lord had his overlord. If the common man was wronged, he might
address himself against the lord to the overlord, all the way up to the
emperor. When, for example, Duke Ulrich of Wiirttemberg mur-
dered a Hutten and took his wife, the Hutten clan appealed to the
empire, and the duke was expelled. The emperor in turn was subject
to check by the electors. If one inquire as to the attitude of Luther
to democracy, one must bear in mind that democracy is a complex
concept. A widely extended franchise commended itself to none in
his generation, except in Switzerland, but a responsiveness of govern-
ment to the will and welfare of the people may have been better exem-
plified in the intimate patriarchalism of his feudal society than in the
unwieldy modern democracies.

Neither was conscience surrendered to the state. The illegitimacy
of rebellion did not exclude civil disobedience. This was not a right,
but a duty on two counts: "In case the magistrate transgresses the
first three of the Ten Commandments relating to religion, say to him,
'Dear lord, I owe you obedience with life and goods. Command me
within the limits of your power on earth, and I will obey. But to put
away books [referring to Luther's New Testament] I will not obey,
for in this you are a tyrant.' " Secondly, the prince is not to be obeyed
if he requires service in a war manifestly unjust, as when Joachim
of Brandenburg enlisted soldiers, ostensibly against the Turk but
really against the Lutherans. They deserted with Luther's hearty ap-
proval. "Since God will have us leave father and mother for his sake,
certainly he will have us leave lords for his sake."

Servility on the part of the Church to the magistrate was repugnant
to Luther. The minister is commissioned to be the mentor of the
magistrate.

We should wash the fur of the magistrate and clean out his mouth
whether he laughs or rages. Christ has instructed us preachers not to
withhold the truth from the lords but to exhort and chide them in their
injustice. Christ did not say to Pilate, "You have no power over me." He

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said that Pilate did have power, but he said, "You do not have this power
from yourself. It is given to you from God." Therefore he upbraided
Pilate. We do the same. We recognize the authority, but we must rebuke
our Pilates in their crime and self-confidence. Then they say to us, "You
are reviling the majesty of God," to which we answer, "We will suffer
what you do to us, but to keep still and let it appear that you do right
when you do wrong, that we cannot and will not do." We must confess
the truth and rebuke the evil. There is a big difference between suffering
injustice and keeping still. We should suffer. We should not keep still.
The Christian must bear testimony for the truth and die for the truth.
But how can he die for the truth if he has not first confessed the truth?
Thus Christ showed that Pilate did exercise authority from God and at
the same time rebuked him for doing wrong.

Here Luther was returning to the theme of the calling. The magis-
trate has his calling; the minister has his calling. Each must* serve God
according to his office. One calling is not better than another. One
is not easier than another. There are temptations peculiar to each.
The husband is tempted to lust, the merchant to greed, the magistrate
to arrogance. And if the duty is faithfully performed, all the more
will there be crosses.

If the burgomaster does his duty, there will scarcely be four who will
like him. If the father disciplines his son, the lad will be ugly. It is true
everywhere. The prince has nothing for his pains. One is tempted to
say, "Let the Devil be burgomaster. Let Lucifer preach. I will go to the
desert and serve God there." It is no light task to love your neighbor as
yourself. The more I live, the more vexation I have. But I will not
grumble. So long as I have my job I will say, "I did not start it for myself,
and I will not end it. It is for God and those who want to hear the gospel,
and I will not pass by on the other side."

But the spirit of work should not be grim. Let the birds here teach
us a lesson.

If you say, "Hey, birdie, why are you so gay? You have no cook, no
cellar," he will answer, "I do not sow, I do not reap, I do not gather into
barns. But I have a cook, and his name is Heavenly Father. Fool, shame

245

HERE I STAND

m you. You do not sing. You work all day and cannot sleep for worry. '.
ling as if I had a thousand throats."

on
sing

The sum of it all is this, that at certain points Luther's attitudes on
economic and political problems could be predicted in advance. He
would tolerate no wanton disturbance of the ancient ways. Rebellion
was to him intolerable; but since religion alone is the paramount con-
cern of man, the forms of the external life are indifferent and may be
left to be determined by circumstance.

2416

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE MIDDLE WAY

ERSONS committed to his ideals were plainly
necessary if Luther's program was to be im-
plemented. At one time the hope did not ap-
pear unrealistic that all Europe could be en-
listed for the reform. Luther naively supposed
that the pope himself, when abuses were called
to his attention, would promptly correct them.
With the waning of this hope expectancy
turned to the nobility of the German nation, including the emperor,
but this dream also proved to be illusory; and when Luther returned to
Wittenberg, he was under the ban of both the Church and the empire.
Yet even under those circumstances hope for a widespread reform
did not appear altogether chimerical when a change occurred in the
character of the papacy. The flippant popes of the Renaissance were
succeeded by one of the austere popes of the Counter Reformation, a
pope as much concerned as Luther for the correction of the moral and
financial abuses. Such a pope was Hadrian VI, a Hollander reared in
the tradition of the Brethren of the Common Life. If his brief pontifi-
cate did not suffice to cleanse the Augean stables of the papacy, it
might have been enough to inaugurate a new policy with regard to
Luther. But quite on die contrary the struggle was only intensified.
This was, in Luther's eyes, precisely as it should be. All along he had
declared that the contest was over the faith and not over the life, and
that if the morals were amended the teaching would still be unsound.
The verdict of Erasmus remained true that the breach was irreparable
because even if the reformed popes had conceded clerical marriage as

247

FREDERICK AND LUTHER

the Church does to the Uniats, and communion in both kinds as on
occasion to the Hussites, and a national church under Rome as in Spain
and France, and even justification by faith properly guarded as at
Trent even so they could scarcely have suffered the reduction of the
number of the sacraments, the emasculation of the mass, the doctrine of
the priesthood of all believers, let alone the rejection of papal infalli-
bility, even though as yet it had not been formally promulgated.

HOSTILITY OF THE REFORMED PAPACY

And Luther did nothing to placate them. His work of reconstruction
commenced with further demolition. Indulgences were still being pro-
claimed in Wittenberg. Luther addressed to the elector a demand that
they be discontinued in so far as they rested on his patronage. Frederick
was not hard to persuade, probably because indulgences had become so
unpopular that the very preacher who announced them on All Saints'

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THE MIDDLE WAY

Day of 1522 declared them to be rubbish, and the crowds greeted the
relics with booing. Frederick did not repeat the attempt on All Saints'
Day of 1523.

When asked whether in that case he desired the annual exhibition
of relics, he replied in the negative. Their whole purpose had been
to advertise the indulgences. Yet he could not quite bring himself to
destroy or dissipate the collection amassed during a lifetime. A few
of the choicest relics should be placed upon the altar -and the rest
stored in the sacristy to be shown on request to foreign visitors. The
elector who had traveled to the Orient and negotiated with monarchs
and ecclesiastical dignitaries for one more holy bone renounced his
cherished avocation and relinquished the most lucrative revenue of
the Castle Church and the university.

Luther's next attack centered on the endowed masses in the Castle
Church, where twenty-five priests were employed to celebrate for
the souls of the departed members of the House of Saxony. These
private sacrifices had come to be in Luther's eyes idolatry, sacrilege,
and blasphemy. Part of his indignation was aroused by the immorality
of the priests, for he estimated that out of the twenty-five not over
three were not f ornicators. But this was not the primary ground for
his attack. He always insisted that he differed from previous reform-
ers in that they attacked the life and he the doctrine. Certainly Fred-
erick should as patron suppress this scandal, but that might have been
done by dismissing the offenders and securing better recruits. Lu-
ther in that case would not have been satisfied. The mass must go.
Frederick obviously would have to be persuaded. Preferably the clergy
also should concur. But Luther was ready to move, either in accord
with both or without either. The essential was always the reform,
whether instituted by the prince without the clergy or by the clergy
without the prince. Universal acquiescence was desirable but not im-
perative. The plea of weakness might become a cloak for wickedness.
"Not all the priests of Baal under Josiah believed their rites to be im-
pious, but Josiah paid no attention to that- It is one thing to tolerate
the weak in nonessentials, but to tolerate in matters clearly impious is
itself impious." The mob smashed the windows of the deanery. When

249

HERE I STAND

the recalcitrants were down to three, Luther reproached them with a
sectarian spirit in holding out against the unity of the universal
Church as if Wittenberg were Christendom. This obviously sounds
incredibly naive, but Luther was not thinking either of numbers or
of centuries, but of the Church founded upon the Word of God as he
understood it. The town council was more abrupt. They informed
the priests that the celebration of the mass was an offense worthy of
death. The clergy at length unanimously declared themselves con-
vinced. By the beginning of 1525 the mass was at an end in Witten-
berg. One cannot say precisely that it had been suppressed by force,
but certainly the pressure was acute, though not inordinately hurried.
The mass had continued for two and one half years after Luther's
return from the Wartburg.

Such changes aroused in the papists intense antagonism, and Pope
Hadrian addressed to Frederick the Wise a veritable manifesto of the
Counter Reformation.

Beloved in Christ, we have endured enough and more than enough.
Our predecessors exhorted you to desist from corrupting the Christian
faith through Martin Luther, but the trumpet has sounded in vain. We
have been moved by mercy and paternal affection to give you a fatherly ad-
monition. The Saxons have ever been defenders of the faith. But now
who has bewitched you? Who has wasted the vineyard of the Lord? Who
but a wild boar? We have you to thank that the churches are without
people, the people without priests, the priests without honor, and Chris-
tians without Christ. The veil of the temple is rent. Be not beguiled be-
cause Martin Luther appeals to Scripture. So does every heretic, but
Scripture is a book sealed with seven seals which cannot be so well
opened by one carnal man as by all the holy saints. The fruits of this
evil are evident. For this robber of churches incites the people to smash
images and break crosses. He exhorts the laity to wash their hands in the
blood of the priests. He has rejected or corrupted the sacraments, re-
pudiated the expunging of sins through fasts, and rejects the daily celebra-
tion of the mass. He has committed the decretals of the holy Fathers to
the flames. Does this sound to you like Christ or Antichrist? Separate
yourself from Martin Luther and put a muzzle on his blasphemous tongue.
If you will do this, we will rejoice with all the angels of heaven over one
sinner that is saved. But if you refuse, then in the name of Almighty God

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THE MIDDLE WAY

and Jesus Christ our Lord, whom we represent on earth, we tell you that
you will not escape punishment on earth and eternal fire hereafter. Pope
Hadrian and Emperor Charles are in accord. Repent therefore before
you feel the two swords.

Frederick replied:

Holy Father, I have never and do not now act other than as a Chris-
tian man and an obedient son of the holy Christian Church. I trust that
God Almighty will give me his grace that for the few years I have left
I may strengthen his holy word, service, peace, and faith.

But the fate of Luther and his reform rested not with the pope, the
emperor, or the elector alone, but with the German diet meeting at
Niirnberg. Like the Diet of Worms it was divided. The Catholic party
was rallied by the papal legate, who freely conceded abuses but blamed
them all on the deceased Leo and called for obedience to his noble

successor. Leadership among
the laity fell in the absence of
the emperor to his brother
Ferdinand of Austria, who in his
brief week of attendance tried
to enforce the edict of Worms
on his own authority and was
promptly repulsed by the diet.
Thereupon a coterie of Catholic
princes formed the nucleus of
the subsequent league. There
was Joachim of Brandenburg,
eager by zeal against Lutheran-
ism to appease the emperor for
having voted against his elec-
tion. There was Cardinal Lang,
spokesman of the Hapsburgs.
The Bavarians were consistently Catholic, and the Palatinate was
swinging over. This of course was not the definitive alignment.
Frederick the Wise with his bland obstructionism certainly did not

251

DUKE GEORGE

HERE I STAND

speak the common mind of Catholic laity. There were other princes
who gladly heeded the admonitions of the pope. Chief among them
was Duke George, whose zeal against heresy was enough to set the
Rhine on fire. Luther had felt a twinge of uneasiness over his blasts
against the duke and made a gesture of reconciliation but was repulsed.
George said:

I write not in hate but to bring you to yourself. As a layman I am
unable to put on the armor of Saul and dispute Scripture with you, but
I can see that you have offended against your neighbor. You have reviled
not only me but the emperor. You have made Wittenberg an asylum for
escaped monks and nuns. The fruit of your gospel is blasphemy of God
and the sacrament, and rebellion against government. When has there
been more corrupting of cloisters? When more breach of marriages than
since you began to preach? No, Luther, keep your gospel. I will stay by
the gospel of Christ with body and soul, goods and honor. But God is
merciful. He will forgive you if you return, and I will then try to
obtain for you a pardon from the emperor.

Henry VIII was another Catholic prince to have a tilt with Luther,
and he was hardly mollified by the reply which referred to Martin
Luther as "minister at Wittenberg by the grace of God" and to
"Henry, King of England by the disgrace of God." Even though
Luther made a subsequent gesture of reconciliation, Henry continued
to regard him as a preacher of "unsatiate liberty." Plainly the "papists,"
whether clerical or lay, were Sanballats who would impede the build-
ing of the walls.

KECOIL OF THE MODERATE CATHOLICS: ERASMUS

The Catholic moderates might conceivably react differentlythe
Erasmians, the Humanists who had constituted the middle party
at Worms. And indeed their stand might have been different had
not the pressures been so intense as to leave no room for neutrality.
Reluctantly the mediators were driven to enter one camp or the
other. They went in both directions. Some very outstanding per-
sons returned to Rome, among them Pirkheimer of Nxirnberg.
The deepest offense to Luther lay in the stand taken by Erasmus

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THE MIDDLE WAY

of Rotterdam. His position had not essentially changed. He still
felt that Luther had done much good, and that he was no heretic.
This Erasmus openly said in a colloquy published as late as 1524.
But he deplored the disintegration of Christendom. His dream of
European concord had been shattered by the outbreak of war
between France and the empire before the close .of the Diet
of Worms. Coincidently the ecclesiastical division had rent the
seamless robe of Christ. Erasmus preferred the role of mediator, but
he was unremittingly pushed by prominent persons whom he
esteemed kings, cardinals, and his old friend Pope Hadrian to
declare himself. At last he yielded and consented to state at what
point he differed from Luther. It was not indulgences. It was not
the mass. It was the doctrine of man. Erasmus brought out a tract
entitled On the "Freedom of the Will.

Luther thanked him for centering the discussion at this point.
"You alone have gone to the heart of the problem instead of debating
the papacy, indulgences, purgatory, and similar trifles. You alone have
gone to the core, and I thank you for it." Luther's fundamental
break with the Catholic Church was over the nature and destiny of
man, and much more over the destiny than the nature. That was why
he and Erasmus did not come altogether to grips. Erasmus was
interested primarily in morals, whereas Luther's question was whether
doing right, even if it is possible, can affect man's fate. Erasmus
succeeded in diverting Luther from the course by asking whether
the ethical precepts of the Gospels have any point if they cannot
be fulfilled. Luther countered with characteristic controversial reck-
lessness that man is like a donkey ridden now by God and now by
the Devil, a statement which certainly seems to imply that man has
no freedom whatever to decide for good or ill. This certainly was
not Luther's habitual thought. He was perfectly ready to say that
even the natural man can practice the civil virtues as a responsible
husband, an affectionate father, a decent citizen, and an upright
magistrate. Man is capable of the integrity and valor displayed by
the Romans of old or the Turks of today. Most of the precepts of
the gospel can be outwardly kept. But in the eyes of God "there

253

HERE I STAND

is none righteous, no, not one." Motives are never pure. The noblest
acts are vitiated by arrogance, self-love, the desire of the eye and
the lust of power. From the religious point of view man is a sinner.
He has therefore no claim upon God. If man is not irretrievably
lost, it can only be because God deigns to favor him beyond his
desert.

The problem then shifts from man to God. Erasmus was con-
cerned for morality in God as well as in man. Is it not unjust that
God should create man incapable of fulfilling the conditions for
salvation and then at whim save or damn for what cannot be helped?
"Of course this is a stumbling block," answered Luther.

Common sense and natural reason are highly offended that God by his
mere will deserts, hardens, and damns, as if he delighted in sins and in
such eternal torments, he who is said to be of such mercy and goodness.
Such a concept of God appears wicked, cruel, and intolerable, and by
it many men have been revolted in all ages. I myself was once off ended
to the very depth of the abyss of desperation, so that I wished I had
never been created. There is no use trying to get away from this by
ingenious distinctions. Natural reason, however much it is offended, must
admit the consequences of the omniscience and omnipotence of God.

But this was precisely what the natural reason of Erasmus would
not concede. He perceived that the conflict lay between the power
and goodness of God. He would rather limit the power than forfeit
the goodness; Luther the reverse. At any rate Erasmus would not
assert more than he had to. Difficulties he recognized that some men,
for example, are born morons, and God is responsible for their con-
ditionbut why project these riddles of life into eternity and transfix
paradoxes into dogmas? "They are not my paradoxes," retorted
Luther. "They are God's paradoxes." Erasmus inquired how Luther
could know this, and he countered by citing the statement of the
apostle Paul that the fates of Jacob and Esau were settled before
they emerged from the womb. Erasmus rejoined that other passages
of Scripture bear a different sense, and the matter is therefore not
clear. If it were, why should debates over it have continued for
centuries? Scripture needs to be interpreted, and the claim of the

254

THE MIDDLE WAY

Lutherans to have the Spirit by which to interpret is not confirmed
by the fruits of the Spirit in their behavior.

Luther's answer to Erasmus was to impute to him a spirit of
skepticism, levity, and impiety. Tranquil discussion of man's destiny
of itself betrays insensitivity to God's majesty. The craving of
Erasmus to confine himself to the clear and simple spelled for Luther
the abandonment of Christianity, for the reason that Christianity
cannot be simple and obvious to the natural man.

Show me a single mortal in the whole universe, no matter how just
and saintly, to whose mind it would have ever occurred that this should
be the way of salvation to believe in him who was both God and man,
who died for our sins, who rose and sits at the right hand of the Father.
What philosopher ever saw this? Who among the prophets? The cross
is a scandal to the Jews and a folly to the Gentiles. ... If it is difficult to
believe in God's mercy and goodness when he damns those who do not
deserve it, we must recall that if God's justice could be recognized as
just by human comprehension, it would not be divine. Since God is true
and one, he is utterly incomprehensible and inaccessible to human reason.
Therefore his justice also must be imcomprehensible. "O the depth of the
riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are
his judgments!"

They are hidden to the light of nature and revealed only to the
light of glory. "Erasmus, who does not go beyond the light of nature,"
said Luther, "may like Moses die in the plains of Moab without
entering into the promised land of those higher studies which pertain
to piety."

Erasmus characterized his own position in these words: "The wise
navigator will steer between Scylla and Charybdis. I have sought
to be a spectator of this tragedy." Such a role was not permitted to
him, and between the confessional millstones his type was crushed.
Where again does one find precisely his blend of the cultivated
Catholic scholar: tolerant, liberal, dedicated to the revival of the
classical Christian heritage in the unity of Christendom? The leadership
of Protestantism was to pass to the Neo-Scholastics and of the Cath-
olics to the Jesuits.

255

HERE I STAND

Luther for all his bluster was not untouched by the reproach that
his acrimony ill comported with the spirit of the apostles. He had
angered Henry VIII, infuriated Duke George, estranged Erasmus.
Had he perhaps hurt also old Dr. Staupitz, who had not written for
some time? Luther inquired, and Staupitz answered:

My love for you is unchanged, passing the love of women . . . , but you
seem to me to condemn many external things which do not affect justifica-
tion. Why is the cowl a stench in your nostrils when many in it have lived
holy lives? There is nothing without abuse. My dear friend, I beseech you
to remember the weak. Do not denounce points of indifference which
can be held in sincerity, though in matters of faith be never silent. We
owe much to you, Martin. You have taken us from die pigsty to the
pasture of life. If only you and I could talk for an hour and open the
secrets of our hearts! I hope you will have good fruit at Wittenberg.
My prayers are with you.

Shortly after the receipt of this letter Luther received the news
that Dr. Staupitz was dead. So it was then in the Catholic camp:
the pope implacable, Henry VIII railing, Duke George raging,
Erasmus refuting, Staupitz dead.

DEFECTION OF THE PURITANS: CARLSTADT

Obviously, then, the walls could be rebuilt only by those who had
definitely broken with Rome. And then came the next blow, vastly
more stunning than the first. Those who had broken with Rome were
not themselves united. Partly through defections from Lutheranism
and partly through the independent rise of variant forms of Evangeli-
calism the pattern of diversity was displayed. Luther was stung.
The initial disorders at Wittenberg had already dealt him a more severe
stroke than any he had ever received from the papacy, and he had
already begun to perceive that he was closer to Rome than to the
radicals. At any rate he was in between. "I take," said he, "the middle
road." He found himself now in the position formerly occupied by
the Erasmians at Worms. When they were driven to the wall, the
Lutherans emerged as the middle group between the papists to the
right and the sectaries to the left.

256

THE MIDDLE WAY

One of the most curious aspects of the whole shift is that in many
respects the radicals were the heirs of Erasmus, who saw the great
abuse in Catholicism, not as did Luther in the exaltation of man,
but in the externalization of religion. The degree to which the
sectaries stressed the inward and spiritual led to drastic consequences
for the theory and life of the Church. The spirit was set in opposition
to the letter of Scripture, as already by the Zwickau prophets.
The spirit was considered able to dispense with all external aids,
whether of art or music, as Carlstadt had just been saying, or even
of the sacraments as the outward channels of invisible grace. The
experience of the spirit was made the necessary qualification for
Church membership. Infant baptism was consequently rejected, if
not indeed all baptism, on the ground that outward water "profiteth
nothing." The idea of a national or territorial church was discarded
because the total population of any given district never meets so
exacting a test. The Church of the spirit is of necessity a sect which
may seek to preserve its integrity by segregation from society, or may
attempt to dominate the world through jthe reign of the saints. Here
is the concept of all the Protestant theocracies. Within the religious
community leadership falls to the spirit-filled, be they clerical or lay,
and the outcome may well be the abolition of a professional ministry.

Another Erasmian idea, not altogether consonant with the first,
is that of the restitution of primitive Christianity. The details selected
for restoration were commonly those in accord with the religion
of the spirit, but the very attempt to restore lent itself readily to a
new externalism and legalism.

This whole pattern of ideas was alien to Luther. He could not
separate spirit and flesh because man is a whole. Therefore art, music,
and sacrament are the appropriate expressions of religion. The attempt
to build the Church on a selective basis did intrigue him, and his
fury against the sectaries was in large measure intensified by the
conflict within himself. But the notion of a Protestant theocracy
was to him as abhorrent as the papal monarchy. The effort to restore
the minutiae of New Testament practice wore for him the air of a
new legalism and externality against which he employed the very

257

HERE I STAND

slogans of the radicals and became himself the champion of the spirit
against the letter.

The first attempt to give concretion to many of the elements in this
pattern occurred in Luther's own circle and might be regarded as
defection from his ranks. The environs of Wittenberg provided the
terrain, and the leaders were Andrew Carlstadt again and Thomas
Miintzer. This was unfortunate because, although both were sensitive
and gifted, neither was balanced and stable. If Luther had met such
ideas first in Zwingli and the sober Anabaptists, he might not have
been so devoid of understanding and so implacable in opposition.

Carlstadt's most serious radicalism developed after he had retired
to the parish of Orlamiinde. There he added to his prior attack on
images and church music a further denial of the real presence of
Christ in the sacrament of the altar. The objection in all three
instances was to the use of the physical as a means of communion with
the divine. God is a spirit, and he cannot be in bread and wine.
Christ said only, "This do in remembrance of me." Hence the bread
and wine are merely reminders, not even symbols, let alone channels.
Carlstadt interpreted the words of Christ, "This is my body, this is
my blood," to mean, "This is the body which will be broken. This
is the blood which will be shed." Luther countered that if this
passage was in the least ambiguous there was another text which reads,
"The cup . , . , is it not the communion of the blood of Christ?
The bread . . . , is it not the communion of the body of Christ?"
(I Cor. 10:16.) "This is the thunderclap from which there is no
escape. If five years ago I could have been convinced of Carlstadt's
position, I should have been grateful for such a mighty weapon
against the papacy, but the Scripture was too strong for me." One
wonders whether Scripture was really determinative. The roles of
Luther and Carlstadt were reversed when they passed from the
question of images to the Lord's Supper. Carlstadt was the literalist
on the words of Moses, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven
image," and Luther on the words of Christ, "This is my body." The
real question was whether the physical is an aid or an impediment to
religion. Carlstadt's Biblicism was in evidence mainly in restraining

258

THE MIDDLE WAY

him from rejecting the Lord's Supper entirely, as did the Quakers.
He retained the rite because Christ said, "This do in remembrance
of me."

He rejected likewise infant baptism. The Zwickau prophets had
done this before him, and the Anabaptists were to make this the
cardinal tenet of their sect. The essential point was the necessity
of an adult experience of religious conviction. There was with Carl-
stadt the added point that outward physical water is of n.o efficacy
and is often destructive, as when the hosts of Pharaoh were swallowed
in the Red Sea. One wonders again why he did not reject all baptism.
His emphasis on Sabbatarianism was designed to give men relief
from mundane tasks that they might have quiet times for the culti-
vation of the inner life.

His greatest eccentricities in Luther's eyes arose from his efforts
to achieve a lay ministry. Luther had proclaimed the priesthood
of all believers. The corollary might be, as with the Quakers, that
there should be no professional minister at all. So far Carlstadt would
not go, but he wished as a minister to be set off in no way from his
fellows. The parishioners were not to call him Herr Doktor or Herr
Pfarrer, but simply "good neighbor" or "Brother Andreas." He gave
up any distinctive garb and wore only a plain gray coat, declined
to be supported by the congregation, undertaking instead to earn his
living at the plow.

Luther was completely without feeling for this whole program.
He cared nothing indeed for the falderal of academic degrees,
but he cared mightily for a trained ministry and perceived that if
Carlstadt's plan prevailed the outcome would assuredly be not that
the peasant would know as much as the preacher, but that the
preacher would know no more than the peasant. He twitted Carl-
stadt for reeling off Hebrew quotations in a peasant's smock. As for
the plain cloak and the "Brother Andreas," these appeared, if not
as an affectation, then as a neomonastic attempt to win the favor of
heaven by spectacular renunciations. As to the earning of one's bread
at the plow, Luther was willing enough to support himself by manual
labor if expelled from his ministry, but voluntarily to withdraw

259

HERE I STAND

from a parish to a farm savored to him of an evasion of responsibility.
"What would I not give to get away from a cantankerous congrega-
tion and look into the friendly eyes of animals?"

Other points in Carlstadt's program such as Sabbatarianism,
obligatory clerical matrimony, and the rejection of images appeared
to Luther as a new legalism. Carlstadt, he claimed, reversed the rela-
tion of inward and outward. By making absolute rules for days,
dress, and status he was attaching altogether too much importance
to the exterior. Here the spirit should decide. Plainly there were other
notes in Carlstadt's religion than the stress on the spiritual. He was
consumed by a passion for holiness and a concern for the renunciation
of privilege with a degree of social leveling. At these points Luther
would accord a wider latitude. And he might have been willing to
grant latitude also to Carlstadt had it not been for the insurgence
of a much more sinister figure.

THE REVOLUTIONARY SAINTS: MUNTZER

Thomas Miintzer came from Zwickau and revived some of
the ideas of the prophets from that town, but with much greater

allure because of his learning,
ability, and intense enthusiasm.
Miintzer gave a much more
radical turn than Carlstadt to
the cleavage of spirit and flesh
by rejecting not only infant
baptism, but all baptism, $nd by
applying this dualism to the
spirit versus the letter of Scrip-
ture. Those who rely on the
letter, said he, are the scribes
against whom Christ inveighed.
Scripture as a mere book is but
paper and ink. "Bible, Babel,
bubble!" he cried. Behind this
virulence was a religious con-

THOMAS MUNTZER

260

THE MIDDLE WAY

cern. Miintzer had not been troubled like Luther as to how
to get right with God, but as to whether there is any God to
get right with. The Scripture as a mere written record did not
reassure him because he observed that it is convincing only to
the convinced. The Turks are acquainted with the Bible but remain
completely alienated. The men who wrote the Bible had no
Bible at the time when they wrote. Whence, then, did they derive
their assurance? The only answer can be that God spoke to them
directly, and so must he speak to us if we are so much as to under-
stand the Bible. Miintzer held, with the Catholic Church, that the
Bible is inadequate without a divinely inspired interpreter, but that
interpreter is not the Church nor the pope but the prophet, the new
Elijah, the new Daniel, to whom is given the key of David to open
the book sealed with seven seals.

Miintzer was readily able to find support for his view of the spirit
in the Scripture itself, where it is said that "the letter killeth, but
the spirit giveth life" (II Cor. 3:6). Luther replied that of course
the letter without the spirit is dead, but the two are no more to be
divorced than the soul is to be separated from the body. The real
menace of Miintzer in Luther's eyes was that he destroyed the
uniqueness of Christian revelation in the past by his elevation of
revelation in the present. Luther for himself had had absolutely no
experience of any contemporary revelation, and in times of despond-
ency the advice to rely upon the spirit was for him a counsel of
despair, since within he could find only utter blackness.

In such moments he must have assurance in tangible form in a
written record of the stupendous act of God in Christ. Luther freely
avowed his weakness and his need of historic revelation. Therefore
he would not listen to Miintzer though "he had swallowed the Holy
Ghost, feathers and all." At this point lies much of the difference
not only between Miintzer and Luther, but between modern liberal
Protestantism and the religion of the founders.

Had Miintzer drawn no practical consequences from his view,
Luther would have been less outraged, but Miintzer proceeded to
use the gift of the Spirit as a basis for the formation of a church.

261

HERE I STAND

He is the progenitor of the Protestant theocracies, based not as in
Judaism primarily on blood and soil, nor as in Catholicism on sacra-
mentalism, but rather on inward experience of the infusion of the
Spirit. Those who are thus reborn can recognize each other and can
join in a covenant of the elect, whose mission it is to erect God's
kingdom. Such a role for the Church was to Luther completely
repugnant. Miintzer did not expect the elect to enter into their in-
heritance without a struggle. They would have to slaughter the un-
godly. At this point Luther was horrified because the sword is given
to the magistrate, not to the minister, let alone to the saints. In the
struggle Miintzer well recognized that many of the godly would fall,
and he was constantly harping on suffering and cross bearing as a
mark of the elect. Luther was taunted as "Dr. Easychair and Dr.
Pussyfoot," basking in the favor of the princes. His reply was that the
outward cross is neither to be sought nor evaded. The constant cross
is suffering within. Once again the tables were turned, and Luther
appeared as the champion of the inward.

BANISHMENT OF THE AGITATORS

In 1523 Miintzer succeeded in having himself elected as minister
in the Saxon town of Alstedt. As many as two thousand outsiders
flocked to his preaching. He was able to report thirty units ready
to slaughter the ungodly. The only overt act, however, was the
burning of a chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary. This was in
March, 1524.

Luther thereupon addressed the princes of Saxony:

These Alstedters revile the Bible and rave about the spirit, but where
do they show the fruits of the spirit, love, joy, peace, and patience? Do
not interfere with them so long as they confine themselves to the office
of the Word. Let the spirits fight it out, but when the sword is drawn
you must step in, be it they or we who take it. You must banish the
offender from the land. Our office is simply preaching and suffering.
Christ and the apostles did not smash images and churches, but won
hearts with God's Word. The Old Testament slaughter of the ungodly
is not to be imitated. If these Alstedters want to wipe out the ungodly,

262

THE MIDDLE WAY

they will have to bathe in blood. But you are ordained of God to keep
the peace, and you must not sleep.

The young prince John Frederick, nephew and heir apparent to
Frederick the Wise, was already being associated with his uncle
and his father in the administration of Saxony. To a subordinate he
wrote in August, 1524:

I am having a terrible time with the Satan of Alstedt. Kindliness and
letters do not suffice. The sword which is ordained of God to punish the
evil must be used with energy. Carlstadt also is stirring up something, and
the Devil wants to be Lord.

Here Carlstadt and Miintzer are linked together. For Carlstadt
this was both unjust and unfortunate. He had written to Miintzer
that he would have nothing to do with his covenant, nor with blood-
shed. But the iconoclastic riots in Orlamunde and Alstedt appeared to
be of one stripe. Carlstadt was summoned to Jena for an interview
with Luther and convinced him of the injustice of the charge of
rebellion. When, however, Luther himself visited Orlamunde and
observed the revolutionary temper of the congregation, he came to
question the sincerity of the disclaimer and acquiesced in the banish-
ment of Carlstadt, who was compelled to quit Saxony, leaving his
pregnant wife and their child to join him later. He departed claiming
in the very words of Luther after Worms that he had been con-
demned "unheard and unconvicted," and that he had been expelled
by his former colleague who was twice a papist and a cousin of
Antichrist.

Miintzer, having been summoned to preach at Weimar in the
presence of Frederick the Wise and his brother Duke John, had the
temerity to seek to enlist them for his program. He took his text
from Daniel's interpretation of the dream of King Nebuchadnezzar
and began by saying that the Church was an undefiled virgin until
corrupted by the scribes who murder the Spirit and assert that God
no longer reveals himself as of old. He declared further:

263

HERE I STAND

But God does disclose himself in the inner word in the abyss of the
soul. The man who has not received the living witness of God knows
really nothing about God, though he may have swallowed 100,000
Bibles. God comes in dreams to his beloved as he did to the patriarchs,
prophets, and apostles. He comes especially in affliction. That is why
Brother Easychair rejects him. God pours out his Spirit upon all flesh,
and now the Spirit reveals to the elect a mighty and irresistible reforma-
tion to come. This is the fulfilment of the prediction of Daniel about
the fifth monarchy. You princes of Saxony, you need a new Daniel to
disclose unto you this revelation and to show you your role. Think not
that the power of God will be realized if your swords rust in the scabbard.
Christ said that he came not to bring peace but a sword, and Deuteronomy
says "You are a holy people. Spare not the idolaters, break down their
altars, smash their images and burn them in the fire." The sword is given
to you to wipe out the ungodly. If you decline, it will be taken from you.
Those who resist should be slaughtered without mercy as Elijah smote
the priests of Baal. Priests and monks who mock the gospel should be
killed. The godless have no right to live. May you like Nebuchadnezzar
appoint a Daniel to inform you of the leadings of the Spirit.

The Saxon princes were of no mind to appoint Miintzer to such a
post. Instead they referred the case to a committee. Miintzer did not
wait for the report but by night escaped over the walls of Alstedt
and fled from Saxony. Latitude had been vindicated at the expense
of liberty. The regime of Carlstadt would have been rigoristic and
the reign of Miintzer's saints intolerant of the godless. Yet the fact
could not be gainsaid that the agitators had been expelled by the
sword of the magistrate. Luther ruefully pondered the gibe that
instead of being a martyr he was making martyrs.

264

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

BEHEMOTH, LEVIATHAN,
AND THE GREAT WATERS

COPE FOR rebuilding was further reduced by
the rise independently of rival forms of Evan-
gelicalism, namely Zwinglianism and Anabap-
tism. These were Luther's Behemoth and
Leviathan. Then came the conjunction of the
religious ferment with a vast social revolt when
the waters were unloosed in the Peasants'
War. The outcome was at once a restriction
of Luther's sphere of operations and a waning of his trust in human-
kind.

The new movements were largely independent but not wholly
unrelated to the recent disturbances in Wittenberg. Carlstadt expelled
from Saxony went to the south German cities. Luther shortly there-
after received letters from the ministers of Strassburg. "We are not
yet persuaded by Carlstadt, but many of his arguments are weighty.
We are disturbed because you have driven out your old colleague
with such inhumanity. At Basel and Zurich are many who agree with
him/' "From the Lord's Supper, the symbol of love, arise such hatreds."
Basel was the residence of Erasmus, who both repudiated and
abetted the inferences drawn from his premises by impetuous dis-
ciples. He would not concede, because the flesh of Christ in the sacra-
ment profits nothing, that therefore the flesh is not present. At the
same time he confided to a friend that were it not for the authority
of the Church he would agree with the innovators.

265

HERE I STAND

RIVALS: ZWINGH AND THE ANABAPTISTS

Zurich was the seat of a new variety- of the Reformation which
was to be set over against that of Wittenberg and characterized
as the Reformed. The leader was Ulrich Zwingli. He had received a
Humanist training and as a Catholic priest divided his parsonage
into a parish house on the ground floor and a library of the classics
on the second. On the appearance of Erasmus' New Testament he
committed the epistles to memory in Greek, and affirmed in conse-
quence that Luther had been able to teach him nothing about the
understanding of Paul. But what Zwingli selected for emphasis in
Paul was the text, "The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life," which
he coupled with a Johannine verse, "The flesh profiteth nothing."
Flesh was taken by Zwingli in the Platonic sense of body, whereas
Luther understood it in the Hebraic sense of the evil heart which may
or may not be physical. Zwingli made a characteristic deduction
from his disparagement of the body that art and music are inap-
propriate as the handmaids of religionand this, although he was
himself a musician accomplished on six instruments. The next step
was easy: to deny the real presence in the sacrament, which was
reduced to a memorial of the death of Christ as the Passover was a
commemoration of the escape of Israel from Egypt. When Luther
appealed to the words, "This is my body," Zwingli countered that in
the Aramaic tongue spoken by Jesus the copulative verb was omitted,
so that what he said was simply, "This my body." (In the Greek
of the Lukan version the companion verse reads, "This cup the new
testament.") And in this phrase one may with perfect right supply
not "is" but "signifies." Luther sensed at once the affinity of Zwingli's
view with that of Carlstadt, on whom he was not dependent, and with
that of Erasmus, in whom he was steeped. The familiar reproach
against Erasmus was hurled at Zwingli that he did not take religion
seriously* "How does he know?" retorted Zwingli. "Can he read the
secrets of our hearts?"

A similarity to Miintzer also impressed Luther because Zwingli
was politically minded and not averse to the use of the sword even

266

BEHEMOTH, LEVIATHAN, AND GREAT WATERS

for religion. Zwingli was always a Swiss patriot, and in translating
the Twenty-third Psalm rendered the second verse "He maketh
me to lie down in an Alpine meadow." And there he could find no
still waters. The evangelical issue threatened to disrupt his beloved
confederation. For the Catholics turned to the traditional enemy,
the House of Hapsburg. Ferdinand of Austria was instrumental in
the calling of the assembly of Baden to discuss Zwingli's theory of
the sacrament. This was his Diet of Worms, and the sequel convinced
him that the gospel could be saved in Switzerland and the confedera-
tion conserved only if the Catholic League with Austria were
countered by an evangelical league with the German Lutherans, ready
if need be to use the sword. But the very notion of a military alliance
for the defense of the gospel savored for Luther of Thomas Miintzer.
Then arose in Zwingli's circle a party at the opposite pole of the
political question. These were the Anabaptists. Their point of de-
parture was another aspect of the Erasmian program, dear also to
Zwingli. This was the restoration of primitive Christianity, which
they took to mean the adoption of the Sermon on the Mount as a
literal code for all Christians, who should renounce oaths, the use
of the sword whether in war or civil government, private possessions,
bodily adornment, reveling and drunkenness. Pacifism, religious
communism, simplicity, and temperance marked their communities.
The Church should consist only of the twice-born, committed to the
covenant of discipline. Here again we meet the concept of the elect,
discernible by the two tests of spiritual experience and moral achieve-
ment. The Church should rest not on baptism administered in infancy,
but on regeneration, symbolized by baptism in mature years. Every
member should be a priest, a minister, and a missionary prepared to
embark on evangelistic tours. Such a Church, though seeking to
convert the world, could never embrace the unconverted community.
And if the state comprised all the inhabitants, then Church and state
would have to be separated. In any case religion should be free from
constraint. Zwingli was aghast to see the medieval unity shattered
and in panic invoked the arm of the state. In 1525 the Anabaptists
in Zurich were subjected to the death penalty. Luther was not yet

267

HERE I STAND

ready for such savage expedients. But he too was appalled by what
to him appeared to be a reversion to the monastic attempt to win
salvation by a higher righteousness. The leaving of families for
missionary expeditions was in his eyes a sheer desertion of domestic
responsibilities, and the repudiation of the sword prompted him to
new vindications of the divine calling alike of the magistrate and
of the soldier.

RELIGION AND SOCIAL UNREST

Then came the fusion of a great social upheaval with the ferment
of the Reformation in which Luther's principles were to his mind
perverted and the radicalism of the sectaries contributed to a state of
anarchy. Nothing did so much as the Peasants' War to make Luther
recoil against a too drastic departure from the pattern of the Middle
Ages.

The Peasants' War did not arise out of any immediate connection
with the religious issues of the sixteenth century because agrarian un-
rest had been brewing for fully a century. Uprisings had occurred all
over Europe, but especially in south Germany, where particularly the
peasants suffered from changes which ultimately should have minis-
tered to their security and prosperity. Feudal anarchy was being su-
perseded through the consolidation of power. In Spain, England, and
France this had taken place on a national scale, but in Germany only
on a territorial basis; and in each political unit the princes were en-
deavoring to integrate the administration with the help of a bureauc-
racy of salaried court officials. The expenses were met by increased
levies on the land. The peasant paid the bill. The law was being unified
by displacing the diverse local codes in favor of Roman law, where-
by the peasant again suffered, since the Roman law knew only private
property and therefore imperiled the commons the woods, streams,
and meadows shared by the community in old Germanic tradition.
The Roman law knew also only free men, freedmen, and slaves; and
did not have a category which quite fitted the medieval serf.

Another change, associated with the revival of commerce in cities
after the crusades, was the substitution of exchange in coin for ex-

268

BEHEMOTH, LEVIATHAN, AND GREAT WATERS

change in kind. The increased demand for the precious metals en-
hanced their value; and the peasants, who were at first benefited by
the payment of a fixed sum of money rather than a percentage in
kind, found themselves hurt by deflation. Those who could not meet
the imposts sank from freeholders to renters, and from renters to
serfs. The solution which at first suggested itself to the peasants was
simply resistance to the changes operative in their society and a return
to the good old ways. They did not in the beginning demand the aboli-
tion of serfdom but only the prevention of any further extension of
peonage. They clamored rather for free woods, waters, and meadows
as in the former days, for the reduction of imposts and the reinstate-
ment of the ancient Germanic law and local custom. The methods to
be used for the attainment of these ends were at first conservative. On
the occasion of a special grievance the peasants would assemble in
thousands in quite unpremeditated fashion and would present their
petitions to the rulers with a request for arbitration. Not infrequently
the petition was met in a patriarchal way and the burdens in some
measure eased, yet never sufficiently to forestall recurrence.

On the other hand the peasant class was not uniformly impover-
ished; and the initiative for the redress of grievances came not from
the downtrodden, but rather from the more prosperous and enterpris-
ing, possessed themselves of lands and a respectable competence. In-
evitably their demands began to go beyond economic amelioration to
political programs designed to insure for them an influence commen-
surate with and even exceeding their economic importance. The de-
mands likewise changed as the movement worked north into the
region around the big bend of the Rhine where peasants were also
townsmen, since artisans were farmers. In this section urban aspira-
tions were added to the agrarian. Farther down the Rhine the struggle
became almost wholly urban, and the characteristic program called
for a more democratic complexion in the town councils, a less restric-
tive membership in the guilds, the subjection of the clergy to civil
burdens, and uncurtailed rights for citizens to engage in brewing.

Many of the tendencies coalesced in a movement in Alsace just
prior to the Reformation. This uprising used the symbol characteris-

269

HERE I STAND

tic of tie great Peasants' War of 1525, the Bundschuh. The name came
from the leather shoe of the peasant. The long thong with which it
was laced was called a Bund. The word had a double meaning because
a Bund was also an association, a covenant. Miintzer had used this word
for his covenant of the elect. Before him the peasants had adopted the
term for a compact of revolution. The aims of this Bundschuh cen-
tered not so much on economics as on politics. The ax should be laid
to the root of the tree and all government abolished save that of the
pope and the emperor. These were the two traditional swords of
Christendom, the joint rulers of a universal society. To them the
little men had always turned for protection against overlords, bishops,
metropolitans, knights, and princes. The Bundschuh proposed to
complete the process by wiping out all the intermediate grades and
leaving only the two great lords, Caesar and Peter.

Prior to the Peasants' War of 1525 this movement was often anti-
clerical but not anti-Catholic. Bishops and abbots were resented as
exploiters, but "Down with the bishop" did not mean "Down with
the pope" or "Down with the Church." The banners of the Bunds-
chuh often carried, besides the shoe, some religious symbol, such as a
picture of Mary, a crucifix, or a papal tiara. The accompanying wood-
cut shows the crucifix resting upon a black shoe. On the right a
group of peasants are swearing allegiance. Above them other peasants
are tilling the soil, and Abraham is sacrificing Isaac as a sign of the
cost to be paid by the members of the Bund.

LUTHER AND THE PEASANTS

A movement so religiously-minded could not but be affected by
the Reformation. Luther's freedom of the Christian man was purely
religious but could very readily be given a social turn. The priesthood
of believers did not mean for him equalitarianism, but Carlstadt took
it so. Luther certainly had blasted usury and in 1524 came out with
another tract on the subject, in which he scored also the subterfuge
of annuities, a device whereby capital was loaned in perpetuity for an
annual return. His attitude on monasticism likewise admirably suited
peasant covetousness for the spoliation of cloisters. The peasants with

270

BEHEMOTH, LEVIATHAN, AND GREAT WATERS

good reason felt themselves strongly drawn to Luther. A cartoon
displayed Luther surrounded by peasants as he expounded the Word
of God to the ecclesiastics, and when the great upheaval came in
1524-25 a Catholic retorted by
portraying Luther in armor
seated before a fire greasing a
Bundschuh. The Catholic
princes never ceased to hold
Luther responsible for the up-
rising, and the Catholic historian
Janssen has in modern times en-
deavored to prove that Luther
was actually the author of the
movement which he so ve-
hemently repudiated. Such an
explanation hardly takes into ac-
count the century of agrarian
unrest by which the Reforma-
tion had been preceded.

One intangible contributory factor was utterly foreign to Luther's
way of thinking, and that was astrology. Melanchthon dabbled in it
but Luther never. Astrological speculation may well explain why so
many peasant uprisings coincided in the fall of 1524 and the spring of
1525. It was in the year 1524 that all the planets were in the constella-
tion of the Fish. This had been foreseen twenty years previously, and
great disturbances had been predicted for that year. As the time ap-
proached, the foreboding was intense. In the year 1523 as many as
fifty-one tracts appeared on the subject. Woodcuts like the one below
displayed the Fish in the heavens and upheavals upon earth. The peas-
ants with their banners and flails watch on one side; the emperor, the
pope, and the ecclesiastics on the other. Some in 1524 held back in
the hope that the emperor would call a diet and redress the grievances.
The diet was not called, and the great Fish unloosed the waters.

With all this the Reformation had nothing to do. At the same time
a complete dissociation of the reform from the Peasants' War is not de-

271

SWEARING ALLEGIANCE TO THE BUND

mgfctogett Comtwctfon fcer ptonefeit/bie im

. -. . . ,

<ica in jtwym forni n<9 jutrucf<n

PROPHECY OF CONVULSION IN 1524

BEHEMOTH, LEVIATHAN, AND GREAT WATERS

fensible. The attempt to enforce the Edict of Worms through the ar-
rest of Lutheran ministers was not infrequently the immediate occasion
for the assembly of peasant bands to demand their release, and Luther
was regarded as a friend. When some of the peasants were asked to
name persons whom they would accept as arbiters, the first name on
the list was that of Martin Luther. No formal court was ever estab-
lished, and no legal judgment was ever rendered. But Luther did pro-
nounce a verdict on the demands of the peasants as couched in the most
popular of their manifestoes, The Twelve Articles. These opened with
phrases reminiscent of Luther himself. "To the Christian reader, peace

and the grace of God through Christ The gospel is not a cause of

rebellion and disturbance." Rather those who refuse such reasonable
demands are themselves the disturbers. "If it be the will of God to hear
the peasants, who will resist His Majesty? Did he not hear the children
of Israel and deliver them out of the hand of Pharaoh?" The first
articles have to do with the Church. The congregation should have
the right to appoint and remove the minister, who is obligated to
"preach the Holy Gospel without human addition," which sounds
very much like Luther. Ministers are to be supported on a modest
scale by the congregations out of the so-called great tithe on produce.
The surplus should go to relieve the poor and to obviate emergency
taxation in war. The so-called little tithe on cattle should be abolished,
"for the Lord God created cattle for the free use of man." The main
articles embodied the old agrarian program of common fields, forests,
waters. The farmer should be free to hunt, to fish, and to protect his
lands against game. Under supervision he might take wood for fire and
for building. Death dues, which impoverished the widow and orphan
by requisitioning the best cloak or the best cow, were to be abolished.
Rents should be revised in accord with the productivity of the land.
New laws should not displace the old, and the community meadows
should not pass into private hands. The only article which exceeded
the old demands was the one calling for the total abolition of serfdom.
Land should be held on lease with stipulated conditions. If any labor
in excess of the agreement was exacted by the lord, he should pay for
it on a wage basis. The Twelve Articles conceded that any demand not

273

HERE I STAND

consonant with the Word of God should be null. The whole program
was conservative, in line with the old feudal economy. There was.
notably no attack on government.

The evangelical ring of the articles pleased Luther, but in addressing
the peasants he disparaged most of their demands. As to the right of
the congregation to choose its own minister, that depends upon
whether they pay him. Even if they do and the princes will not toler-
ate them, they should rather emigrate than rebel. The abolition of
tithes is highway robbery, and the abrogation of serfdom is making
Christian liberty into a thing of the flesh. Having thus criticized the
program, Luther then turned to the means employed for its realiza-
tion. Under no circumstances must the common man seize the sword
on his own behalf. If each man were to take justice into his own
hands, then there would be "neither authority, government, nor or-
der nor land, but only murder and bloodshed." But all this was not
intended to justify the unspeakable wrongs perpetrated by the rulers.
To the princes Luther addressed an appeal in which he justified many
more of the peasant demands than he had done when speaking to them.
The will of the congregation should be regarded in the choice of a
minister. The demands of the peasants for redress of their grievances
were fair and just. The princes had none but themselves to thank for
these disorders, since they had done nothing but disport themselves in
grandeur while robbing and flaying their subjects. The true solution
was the old way of arbitration.

But that way neither side was disposed to take, and the prediction
of Luther was all too abundantly fulfilled, that nothing would ensue
but murder and bloodshed. Luther had long since declared that he
would never support the private citizen in arms, however just the
cause, since such means inevitably entailed wrong to the innocent.
He could not envisage an orderly revolution. And how there could
have been one in the sixteenth century is difficult to conceive, since
the facilities were inadequate for the forging of a united front by either
persuasion or force. A minority could not then seize the machinery
of the state and by technological warfare impose its will upon the
community, nor were modern means of propaganda available.

274

BEHEMOTH, LEVIATHAN, AND GREAT WATERS

The Peasants' War lacked the cohesion of the Puritan revolution
because there was no clear-cut program and no coherent leadership.
Some groups wanted a peasant dictatorship, some a classless society,
some a return to feudalism, some the abolition of all rulers save the
pope and the emperor. The chiefs were sometimes peasants, sometimes
sectaries, sometimes even knights. The separate bands were not co-
ordinated. There was not even unity of religion because Catholics
and Protestants were on both sides. In Alsace, where the program
called for the elimination of the pope, the struggle took on the com-
plexion of a religious war; and the duke and his brother the cardinal
hunted the peasants as "unbelieving, divisive, undisciplined Lutherans,
ravaging like Huns and Vandals." There can be no question that the
hordes were undisciplined, interested mainly in pillaging castles and
cloisters, raiding game, and depleting fish ponds.

The drawing below of the plundering of a cloister is typical of
the Peasants' War. Observe the group in the upper left with a net in

PEASANTS PLUNDERING A CLOISTER
275

HERE I STAND

the fish pond. Some are carrying off provisions. The bloodshed is in-
considerable. One man only has lost a hand. At various points peasants
are guzzling and vomiting, justifying the stricture that the struggle
was not so much a peasants' war as a wine war.

Another glimpse of their behavior is afforded by a letter of an ab-
bess who says that her cloister was raided till not an egg or a pat of
butter was left. Through their windows the nuns could see the popu-
lace abused and the smoke rising from burning castles. When the war
ended, 70 cloisters had been demolished in Thuringia, and in Fran-
conia 270 castles and 52 cloisters. When the Palatinate succumbed to
the peasants, the disorder was so great that their own leaders had to
invite the former authorities to return to assist in the restoration of
order. But the authorities preferred to wait until the peasants had
first been beaten.

Could it have been otherwise? Was there any person who could
have conceived and carried through a constructive plan for adjust-
ing the peasant to the new political and economic order? The most

PEASANTS ABOUT TO TAKE OVER A CLOISTER
276

BEHEMOTH, LEVIATHAN, AND GREAT WATERS

strategic person would have been an emperor, but no emperor would
essay the role. There was only one other who was sufficiently known
and trusted throughout Germany to have done it. That man was Mar-
tin Luther, and he refused. For him as a minister to take the sword and
lead the peasants would have been to forsake his office as he conceived
it. He had not demolished the papal theocracy to set up in its place a
new theocracy of saints or peasants. The magistrate should keep the
peace. The magistrate should wield the sword. Not for Luther the
role of a Ziska at the head of the Hussite hordes, or of a Cromwell
leading the Ironsides.

MUNTZER FOMENTS REBELLION

Yet Luther would never have condemned the peasants quite so
savagely ha.d it not been that someone else essayed the very role
which he abhorred. In Saxony there would have been no Peasants'
War without Thomas Miintzer. Banished, he had gone to Bohemia,
then had returned and insinuated himself into a Saxon village, won
control over the government, and now at last in the peasants dis-
covered the Bund of the elect who should slaughter the ungodly and
erect the kingdom of the saints. The point was not the redress of
economic grievance, which in Saxony was not acute since serfdom
had long since been abolished. Miintzer was interested in economic
amelioration only for the sake of religion, and he did have the insight
to see what no one else in his generation observed, that faith itself does
not thrive on physical exhaustion. He exclaimed:

Luther says that the poor people have enough in their faith. Doesn't
he see that usury and taxes impede the reception of the faith? He claims
that the Word of God is sufficient. Doesn't he realize that men whose
every moment is consumed in the making of a living have no time to
learn to read the Word of God? The princes bleed the people with usury
and count as their own the fish in the stream, the bkd of the air, and the
grass of the field, and Dr. Liar says, "Amen!" What courage has he, Dr.
Pussyfoot, the new pope of Wittenberg, Dr. Easychair, the basking
sycophant? He says there should be no rebellion because the sword has
been committed by God to the ruler, but the power of the sword be-
longs to the whole community. In the good old days the people stood by

277

HERE I STAND

when judgment was rendered lest the ruler pervert justice, and the rulers
have perverted justice. They shall be cast down from their seats. The
fowls of the heavens are gathering to devour their carcasses.

In such a mood Miintzer came to Miilhausen, and there he was re-
sponsible for fomenting a peasants' war. In front of the pulpit he un-
furled a long, silk banner, emblazoned with a rainbow and the motto,
"The Word of the Lord Abideth Forever." "Now is the time," he
cried. "If you be only three wholly committed unto God, you need
not fear one hundred thousand. On! On! On! Spare not! Pity not the
godless when they cry. Remember the command of God to Moses
to destroy utterly and show no mercy. The whole countryside is in
commotion. Strike! Clang! Clang! On! On!"

The countryside was indeed in commotion. The peasants had been
thoroughly aroused. And Frederick the Wise was weary and at the
point of death. To his brother John he wrote: "Perhaps the peasants
have been given just occasion for their uprising through the impeding
of the Word of God. In many ways the poor folk have been wronged
by the rulers, and now God is visiting his wrath upon us. If it be his
will, the common man will come to rule; and if it be not his will, the
end will soon be otherwise. Let us then pray to God to forgive our
sins, and commit the case to him. He will work it out according to
his good pleasure and glory." Brother John yielded to the peasants
the right of the government to collect tithes. To Frederick he wrote,
"As princes we are ruined."

Luther tried to dike the deluge by going down into the midst of
the peasants and remonstrating. They met him with derision and
violence. Then he penned the tract, Against the Murderous and
Thieving Hordes of Peasants. To his mind hell had been emptied be-
cause all the devils had gone into the peasants, and the archdevil was
in Thomas Miintzer, "who does nothing else but stir up robbery,
murder, and bloodshed." A Christian ruler like Frederick the Wise
should, indeed, search his heart and humbly pray for help against the
Devil, since our "warfare is not with flesh and blood but with spiritual
wickedness." The prince, moreover, should exceed his duty in offer-

278

pfalm, wj

ttep/

TITLE PAGE OF LUTHER'S TRACT "AGAINST THE MURDEROUS
AND THIEVING HORDES OF PEASANTS"

HERE I STAND

ing terms to the mad peasants. If they decline, then he must quickly
grasp the sword. Luther had no use for the plan of Frederick the
Wise to sit still and leave the outcome to the Lord. Philip of Hesse
was more to his taste, who said, "If I hadn't been quick on my toes,
the whole movement in my district would have been out of hand
in four days."
Luther said:

If the peasant is in open rebellion, then he is outside the law of God,
for rebellion is not simply murder, but it is like a great fire which attacks
and lays waste a whole land. Thus, rebellion brings with it a land full of
murders and bloodshed, makes widows and orphans, and turns everything
upside down like a great disaster. Therefore, let everyone who can, smite,
slay, and stab, secretly or openly, remembering that nothing can be more
poisonous, hurtful, or devilish than a rebel. It is just as when one must
kill a mad dog; if you don't strike him, he will strike you, and the whole
land with you.

Some of the princes were only too ready to smite, stab, and slay;
and Thomas Miintzer was only too prompt to provoke them. Duke
George and Landgrave Philip, among others, were quick enough on
their toes. Miintzer and the peasants were drawn up near Franken-
hausen. They sent word to the princes that they sought nothing but
the righteousness of God and desired to avoid bloodshed. The princes
replied, "Deliver up Thomas Miintzer. The rest shall be spared." The
offer was tempting, but Miintzer loosed his eloquence: "Fear not.
Gideon with a handful discomfited the Midianites, and David slew
Goliath." Just at that moment a rainbow appeared in the sky, the
very symbol on Miintzer's banner. He pointed to it as a sign. The
peasants rallied. But the princes took advantage of a truce to surround
them. Only six hundred were taken prisoner. Five thousand were
butchered. Miintzer escaped, but was caught, tortured, and beheaded.
The princes then cleaned up the countryside.

THE DEBACLE AND THE EFFECT ON THE REFORMATION

Other bands fared no better. The forces of the Swabian League
were led by a general who when outnumbered would have recourse

280

BEHEMOTH, LEVIATHAN, AND GREAT WATERS

to diplomacy, duplicity, strategy, and at last combat. He managed
to isolate the bands and destroy them one at a time. The peasants were
tricked and finally outnumbered. It was claimed that 100,000 were
liquidated. On the day when Bishop Conrad rode in triumph into
Wiirzburg, the event was celebrated with the execution of 64 citizens
and peasants. Then the bishop made a tour of his diocese, accom-
panied by his executioner, who took care of 272 persons. Excessive
fines were imposed, yet the peasants as a class were not exterminated;
the nobles could not afford to wipe out the tillers of the soil. Neither
was their prosperity destroyed, for they were able to pay the fines,
but their hope for a share in the political life of Germany was at an
end. For three centuries they became hornless oxen.

Unhappily Luther's savage tract was late in leaving the press and
appeared just at the time when the peasants were being butchered.
He tried to counteract the effect by another pamphlet in which he
still said that the ears of the rebels must be unbuttoned with bullets,
but he had no mind to decry mercy to captives. All the devils, he de-
clared, instead of leaving the peasants and returning to hell, had now
entered the victors, who were simply venting their vengeance.

But this tract was not noticed, and that one sentence of Luther's,
"smite, slay, and stab," brought him obloquy never to be forgotten.
He was reproached by the peasants as a traitor to their cause, though
he never ceased to be held responsible by the Catholic princes for
the entire conflagration. The peasants in consequence tended to find
their religious home in Anabaptism, though this point must not be
overdone. The ultimate agrarian complexion of the Anabaptist move-
ment is not by any means wholly the result of the Peasants' War but
much more of the persecution which could more readily purge the
cities than the farms. Neither did the peasants secede en masse, and to
the end of his life Luther's congregation consisted largely of the
farmers around about Wittenberg. Nevertheless, Luther's stand was
contributory to the alienation of the peasants.

At the same time the Catholic princes held Luther responsible
for the whole outbreak, and color was lent to the charge by the
participation on the peasants' side of hundreds of Lutheran ministers,

281

SURRENDER OF THE UPPER SWABIAN PEASANTS. UPPER LEFT: arrival o\

: slaughter of peasants. BOTTOM: surrender.

THREE VIEWS OF LUTHER AND THE PEASANTS
1. FRIENDLY: LUTHER INSTRUCTS THE PEASANTS

whether voluntarily or under constraint. The rulers in Catholic lands
thereafter used the utmost diligence to exclude evangelical preachers,
and the persistent Catholicism of Bavaria and Austria dates not so
much from the Counter Reformation as from the Peasants' War.

The deepest hurt was to Luther's own spirit. He became afraid,
not of God, not of the Devil, not of himself, but of chaos. Fear was
to make him at times hard and undiscriminating, ready to condone
the suppression of the innocuous lest in them might be concealed
incipient Thomas Miintzers.

The sphere, then, of Luther's activity was being constantly cur-
tailed. The Catholics, whether clerical or lay, were obdurate. The
Swiss, the south German Protestant cities, and the Anabaptists had
developed divergent forms. Even Wittenberg had experienced insur-
gent movements and might not be free from new infiltrations of the
sectaries. But in the areas remaining Luther was resolved to build.

284

2. HOSTILE (CATHOLIC): LXTTHER IN

ARMOR PREPARES TO PUT ON THE

PEASANTS' BOOT

3. HOSTILE (PEASANT SIDE): PEASANT TAXES LUTHER
AS DOUBLE-TONGUED

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE SCHOOL FOR CHARACTER

AFFLED, rebuffed, curtailed, restricted, Lu-
ther did what he could. The most unpremedi-
tated and dramatic witness to his principles
was his own marriage. If he could not re-
form all Christendom, at any rate he could
and he did establish the Protestant parsonage.
He had no thought of doing anything of the
sort; and when the monks began to marry dur-
ing his stay at the Wartburg, he had exclaimed, "Good heavens! They
won't give me a wife." After the event he said that if anyone had told
him at Worms that in six years he would have a wife he would not
have believed him.

But a practical situation arose out of his teaching which caused a
change of mind. Not only monks but also nuns were leaving the
cloisters. Some sisters in a neighboring village sought his counsel as
to what they should do in view of their evangelical persuasion. He
took it upon himself to arrange their escape. This was hardy because
the abduction of nuns was a capital offense, and Duke George ex-
acted the penalty. Frederick the Wise might not be so severe, but he
did not relish open violation of the law. Luther clandestinely enlisted
the aid of a respected burgher of Torgau, Leonard Kopp, sixty years
of age, a merchant who from time to time delivered barrels of herring
to the convent. On the Eve of the Resurrection in 1523 he bundled
twelve nuns into his covered wagon as if they were empty barrels.
Three returned to their own homes. The remaining nine arrived in
Wittenberg. A student reported to a friend, "A wagon load of vestal

286

THE SCHOOL FOR CHARACTER

virgins has just come to town, all more eager for marriage than for
life. God grant them husbands lest worse befall."

Luther felt responsible to find for them all homes, husbands, or
positions of some sort. An obvious solution was that he should dispose
of one case by marrying himself. Someone suggested it. His comment
on November 30, 1524, was that he had no such intention, not be-
cause he was a sexless stone, nor because he was hostile to marriage, but
because he expected daily the death of a heretic. Five months later
Spalatin had apparently renewed the suggestion. He answered:

As for what you write about my marrying, do not be surprised that I
do not wed, even if I am so famous a lover. You should be more surprised
when I write so much about marriage and in this way have so much to
do with women that I do not turn into a woman, let alone marry one.
Although if you want my example you have it abundantly, for I have
had three wives at once and have loved them so hard as to lose two to
other husbands. The third I hold barely with my left hand, and she is
perhaps about to be snatched from me. You are really the timid lover who
do not dare to marry even one.

The jocular reference to the three wives was of course to the three
last nuns waiting to be placed.

KATHERINE VON BORA

In the end all were provided for save one, Katherine von Bora. Two
years after the escape she was still in domestic service, where inciden-
tally she received excellent training, but she was awaiting a better
solution and had been intended for a young patrician of Niirnberg,
studying at Wittenberg. On his return home his family presumably
objected. Katherine was disconsolate and asked Luther to find out
how things stood. The outcome was that the Niirnberger married
someone else. Then Luther made another selection and picked for
Katherine a certain Dr. Glatz, whom she would accept on no terms.
But her position was delicate. She knew well that the whole affair
had been a trial to Luther, doubly so that it fell in the midst of the
Peasants' War, and her case had been the most protracted. In those

287

HERE I STAND

days of early marriages a girl of twenty-six might begin to think of
herself as verging on the upper limits of eligibility. In her embarrass-
ment she bespoke the good offices of a visitor in Wittenberg, Dr.
Amsdorf of Magdeburg. Would he please tell Luther that she could
not abide Glatz but she was not unreasonable? She would take Ams-
dorf himself or Luther. These two were named presumably because
they were out of the question, since beyond the customary age for
marriage. Luther was forty-two.

He did not respond seriously to the suggestion until he went home
to visit his parents. What he related, probably as a huge joke, was
taken by his father as a realistic proposal. His desire was that his son
should pass on the name. The suggestion began to commend itself to
Luther for quite another reason. If he was to be burned at the stake
within a year, he was hardly the person to start a family. But by mar-
riage he could at once give a status to {Catherine and a testimony to
his faith. In May of 1525 he intimated that he would marry Katie be-
fore he died. And early in June, when Albert of Mainz contemplated
secularizing his bishopric after the example of his cousin in Branden-
burg, Luther wrote, "If my marrying will strengthen him, I am ready.
I believe in marriage, and I intend to get married before I die, even
though it should be only a betrothal like Joseph's." This was no love
match. "I am not infatuated," said Luther, "though I cherish my
wife." On another occasion he declared, "I would not exchange Katie
for France or for Venice, because God has given her to me and other
women have worse faults." He summed up by giving three reasons
for his marriage: to please his father, to spite the pope and the Devil,
and to seal his witness before martyrdom.

When once the resolve was taken, marriage followed speedily to
scotch rumor and protest. "All my best friends," said Luther, "ex-
claimed, Tor heaven's sake, not this one.' " A jurist predicted that
"the world and the Devil would laugh and Luther's work would be
undone." Curiously at that very juncture Spalatin asked Luther what
he thought of long engagements. He replied, "Don't put off till
tomorrow! By delay Hannibal lost Rome. By delay Esau forfeited his
birthright. Christ said, 'Ye shall seek me, and ye shall not find.' Thus

388

THE SCHOOL FOR CHARACTER

Scripture, experience, and all creation testify that the gifts of God
must be taken on the wing." That was on the tenth of June. On the
thirteenth Luther was publicly betrothed to Katherine and, in the

A WEDDING PARTY IN FRONT OF THE CHURCH

This is not the betrothal, 'which established the legal bond, but the public
declaration. The party first paraded through the streets to the sound of the
pipers.

eyes of the law, was thereby already a married man. The public cere-
mony which followed was only an announcement party.

This was the social event. It was set for the twenty-seventh, and
Luther sent out letters of invitation: To Spalatin, "You must come to
my wedding. I have made the angels laugh and the devils weep." To
another, "Undoubtedly the rumor of my marriage has reached you.
I can hardly believe itmyself, but the witnesses are too strong. The
wedding will be next Thursday in the presence of my father and
mother. I hope you can bring some game and come yourself." To

289

HERE I STAND

Amsdorf, who had mediated for Katie, "The rumor of my marriage
is correct. I cannot deny my father the hope of progeny, and I had to
confirm my teaching at a time when many are so timid. I hope you
will come." To a Niirnberger, "My tract has greatly offended the
peasants. I'd be sorry if it had not. While I was thinking of other
things, God has suddenly brought me to marriage with Katherine. I
invite you and absolve you from any thought of a present." To
Leonard Kopp, who organized the escape of the nuns, "I am going to
get married. God likes to work miracles and to make a fool of the
world. You must come to the wedding." Curiously there is a second
invitation to Kopp. The editor of the letters in the Weimar edition
questions the authenticity. It reads, "I am to be married on Thursday.
My lord Katie and I invite you to send a barrel of the best Torgau
beer, and if it is not good you will have to drink it all yourself."

On the appointed day at ten o'clock in the morning Luther led
Katherine to the sound of bells through the streets of Wittenberg to
the parish church, where at the portal in the sight of all the people
the religious ceremony was observed. Then came a banquet in the
Augustinian cloister, and after dinner a dance at the town hall. In
the evening there was another banquet. At eleven all the guests took
their departure on pain of being sent home by the magistrates.

DOMESTICITY

Marriage brought many changes to Luther's way of living. "Be-
fore I was married the bed was not made for a whole year and became
foul with sweat. But I worked so hard and was so weary I tumbled
in without noticing it." Katie cleaned house. There were other ad-
justments to be made. "There is a lot to get used to in the first year
of marriage," reflected Luther. "One wakes up in the morning and
finds a pair of pigtails on the pillow which were not there before."
He soon discovered that a husband must take the wishes of his wife
into account. The fears and tears of Katie restrained him from at-
tending Spalatin's wedding, in view of the danger of violence from
peasants on the way. If Martin referred jocularly to his wife as "my
rib," he called her quite as often "my lord." Sometimes he even punned

290

KATHERINE VON BORA AND MARTIN LUTHER
IN THE YEAR OF THEIR MARRIAGE

upon the name Katie and turned it in German into Kette, meaning
chain."

Marriage also brought new financial responsibilities, because
neither of them started with a cent. Katherine's mother died when
she was a baby. Her father consigned her to a convent and married
again. He did nothing for her now. Luther had only his books and
his clothes. He was not entitled to the revenues of the cloister, since
he had abandoned the cowl. He took never a penny from his books,
and his university stipend was not enough for matrimony* lit 1526
he installed a lathe and learned woodworking that in ease of need he
might be able to support his family. But one may doubt whether he
ever took this thought very seriously. He was minded to give him-
self exclusively to the service of the Word, and he trusted that the
heavenly Father would provide. The angel Gabriel must have been
kept rather busy making suggestions to men of substance in Luther's
entourage. The elector made over the Augustinian cloister to Lu-
ther and his bride, doubled his salary, and frequently sent game,
clothes, and wine. And the Archbishop of Mainz, Albert of Bnmdcn-

291

HERE I STAND

burg, presented Katie with twenty gold gulden which her husband
was disposed to decline.

If marriage brought new responsibilities for Luther, vastly more
was this the case for Katie. Keeping house for so improvident a hus-
band was no light task. His giving was so prodigal that Lucas Cranach,
the artist and banker, refused to honor his draft. Luther's comment
was, "I do not believe I can be accused of niggardliness." He was ir-
ritatingly blithe. "I do not worry about debts," he said, "because when
Katie pays one, another comes." She watched him, and she needed to
watch him. In one letter he says to a friend, "I am sending you a vase
as a wedding present. P.S. Katie's hid it." At one point he was of real
help. He took care of the garden, which produced lettuce, cabbage,
peas, beans, melons, and cucumbers. Katie looked after an orchard
beyond the village, which supplied them with apples, grapes, pears,
nuts, and peaches. She had also a fish pond from which she netted
trout, carp, pike, and perch. She looked after the barnyard with hens,
ducks, pigs, and cows, and did the slaughtering herself. Luther gives
a glimpse into her activities in a letter of 1535: "My lord Katie greets
you. She plants our fields, pastures and sells cows, et cetera [how
much does that et cetera cover? ] . In between she has started to read
the Bible. I have promised her 50 gulden [where did he expect to get
them? ] if she finishes by Easter. She is hard at it and is at the end of
the fifth book of Moses." In later years he acquired a farm at Zulsdorf,
which Katie managed, spending there some weeks out of the year.
Luther wrote her on such occasions: "To the rich lady of Zulsdorf,
Mrs. Dr. Katherine Luther, who lives in the flesh at Wittenberg but
in the spirit at Zulsdorf," and again, "To my beloved wife, Katherine,
Mrs. Dr. Luther, mistress of the pig market, lady of Zulsdorf, and
whatsoever other titles may befit thy Grace."

Looking after him was the more of a task because he was so often
sick. He suffered at one time or another from gout, insomnia, catarrh,
hemorrhoids, constipation, stone, dizziness, and ringing in the ears like
all the bells of Halle, Leipzig, Erfurt, and Wittenberg. Katie was a
master of herbs, poultices, and massage. Her son Paul, who became a
doctor, said his mother was half one. She kept Luther from wine and

292

THE SCHOOL FOR CHARACTER

gave him beer, which served as a sedative for insomnia and a solvent
for the stone. And she brewed the beer herself. When he was away
from home, how he appreciated her ministrations! After a year of
marriage he wrote to a friend, "My Katie is in all things so obliging
and pleasing to me that I would not exchange my poverty for the
riches of Croesus." He paid her the highest tribute when he called
St. Paul's epistle to the Galatians "my Katherine von Bora." He be-
gan to be a trifle worried over his devotion: "I give more credit to
Katherine than to Christ, who has done so much more for me."

CHILDREN AND TABLE TALK

Katie had soon more than Luther to think about. On October 21,
1525, Luther confided to a friend, "My Katherine is fulfilling Genesis
1:28." On May 26, 1526, he wrote to another, "There is about to be
born a child of a monk and a nun. Such a child must have a great lord
for godfather. Therefore I am inviting you. I cannot be precise as to
the time." On the eighth of June went out the news, "My dear Katie
brought into the world yesterday by God's grace at two o'clock a
little son, Hans Luther. I must stop. Sick Katie calls me." When the
baby was bound in swaddling clothes, Luther said, "Kick, little fellow.
That is what the pope did to me, but I got loose." The next entry in
Hans's curriculum vitae was this: "Hans is cutting his teeth and be-
ginning to make a joyous nuisance of himself. These arc the joys of
marriage of which the pope is not worthy." On the arrival of a daugh-
ter Luther wrote to a prospective godmother, "Dear lady, God has
produced from me and my wife Katie a little heathen. We hope you
will be willing to become her spiritual mother and help make her a
Christian." There were six children in all. Their names and birthdays
are as follows: Hans, June 7, 1526; Elizabeth, December 10, 1527;
Magdalena, December 17, 1529; Martin, November 9, 1531; Paul,
January 28, 1533; Margaretha, December 17, 1534.

And besides the children there were all those whom the Luthers
took in. On the very night of the wedding, when the guests had de-
parted by eleven o'clock, another guest unbeknown to the magistrate
appeared. It was Carlstadt, fleeing from the Peasants* War and asking

293

HERE I STAND

for shelter; and Luther, who had done so much to put him out of
Saxony, took him into his own home on his wedding night. Carlstadt
of course did not stay indefinitely, but others arrived. And since the
cloister was large and suited for a hospital, the sick also were taken in.
Furthermore the Luthers brought up four orphaned children from
among relatives, in addition to their own six. To eke out the finances
they had recourse to a device familiar in professional families of open-
ing a pension for student boarders. The household would number
as many as twenty-five.

Katie of course could not do all the labor for such an establish-
ment. There were maidservants and manservants, but she had to
superintend everything. Perhaps the hardest part of her position, how-
ever, was that she was invariably overshadowed by her famous hus-
band. She expected it and did not resent it. She always called him
Doctor, and used the polite form Sie rather than the familiar Du. Yet
at times she must have been a trifle disquieted because he was on every

THE LUTHER HOUSEHOLD AT TABLE
There is an unpardonable omission. Katie is not there.
294

THE SCHOOL FOR CHARACTER

occasion the center of the conversation. It was not altogether his
fault. The student boarders regarded mealtime as an opportunity to
continue their education, and sat at table with notebooks to scribble
down every nugget and every clod from his voluble mouth. Katie
thought he should have charged them for it. Luther was himself ir-
ritated at times, though he never put a stop to it. At one point he was
responsible for stepping in front of the lights. He talked a great deal
about his bouts with Satan until to have experienced none placed one
in a lower category. Katie was not to be outdone. One day she arose
from the table, retired to her room, fainted, and afterwards reported
that she had experienced wiulta perniciosct, and she announced it in
Latin. From then on Katie qualified.

Luther's Table Talk would deserve a notice if for no other reason
than its sheer volume. There are 6,596 entries, and it is among the
better known of his works because his students after his death culled,
classified, and produced a handy volume adorned with a woodcut
of Luther at the table with his family. The classification obscures the
lush profusion and unpredictable variety of the original. Luther
ranged from the ineffable majesty of God the Omnipotent to the
frogs in the Elbe. Pigs, popes, pregnancies, politics, and proverbs
jostle one another. Some random samples may convey a faint im-
pression:

The monks are the fleas on God Almighty's fur coat.

When asked why he was so violent, Luther replied, U A twig can be cut
with a bread knife, but an oak calls for an ax."

God uses lust to impel men to marriage, ambition to office, avarice to
earning, and fear to faith.

The only portion of the human anatomy which the pope has had to
leave uncontrolled is the hind end.

Printing is God's latest and best work to spread the true religion
throughout the world.

I am a pillar of the pope. After I am gone he will fare worse.

Birds lack faith. They fly away when I enter the orchard, though I
mean them no ill. Even so do we lack faith in Clod.

There are rumors that the world will end in 1532. I hope it won't be
long. The last decade seems like a new century.

295

A cartoon has appeared of me as a monster with seven heads. I must be
invincible because they cannot overcome me when I have only one.

A dog is a most faithful animal and would be more highly prized if
less common.

A melancholic claimed to be a rooster and strutted about crowing. The
doctor said he, too, was a rooster and for several days crowed with him.
Then he said, "I am not a rooster any more, and you are changed too."
It worked.

Germany is the pope's pig. That is why we have to give him so much
bacon and sausages.

What lies there are about relics! One claims to have a feather from the
wing of the angel Gabriel, and the Bishop of Mainz has a flame from
Moses' burning bush. And how does it happen that eighteen apostles are
buried in Germany when Christ had only twelve?

I cannot think what we shall find to do in heaven, mused Luther. "No
change, no work, no eating, no drinking, nothing to do. I suppose there
will be plenty to see." "Yes," said Melanchthon, " 'Lord, show us the
Father, and it sufficeth us.' " "Why, of course," responded Luther, "that
sight will give us quite enough to do,"

The ark of Noah was 300 ell long, 50 wide, and 30 high. If it were not
in Scripture, I would not believe it. I would have died if I had been in
the ark. It was dark, three times the size of my house, and full of animals.

They are trying to make, me into a fixed star. I am an irregular planet.

An officer in the Turkish war told his men that if they died in battle
they would sup with Christ in Paradise. The officer fled. When asked
why he did not wish to sup with Christ, he said he was fasting that day.

In 1538 on May the 26th there was a big rain, Luther said, "Praise
God. He is giving us one hundred thousand gulden worth. It is raining
corn, wheat, barley, wine, cabbage, onions, grass, and milk. All our
goods we get for nothing. And God sends his only begotten Son, and we
crucify him."

"I am the son of a peasant," said Luther, "and the grandson and the
great-grandson. My father wanted to make me into a burgomaster. He
went to Mansfeld and became a miner* I became a baccalaureate and a
master. Then I became a monk and put off the brown beret. My father
didn't like it, and then I got into the pope's hair and married an apostate
nun. Who could have read that in the stars?"

The above selections speak well enough for themselves, but a
word of comment is in order with regard to Luther's vulgarity, be*

296

Sacrament; fee* 2ltar*

LUTHER AS A SKVEN-HEADKD MONSTKR
One head is a fanatic with <wa$ps in his hair.

HERE I STAND

cause he is often represented as inordinately coarse, and the Table
Talk is cited by way of example. There is no denying that he was
not fastidious, nor was his generation. Life itself stank. One could not
walk around Wittenberg without encountering the odors of the
pigsty, offal, and the slaughterhouse. And even the most genteel
were not reticent about the facts of daily experience. Katie, when
asked about the congregation on a day when Luther was unable to
attend, replied, "The church was so full it stank." "Yes," said Luther,
"they had manure on their boots." Erasmus did not hesitate to com-
pose a colloquy in which the butcher and the fishmonger celebrated
the offensiveness of each other's wares. Luther delighted less in muck
than many of the literary men of his age; but if he did indulge, he ex-
celled in this as in every other area of speech. The volume of coarse-
ness, however, in his total output is slight. Detractors have sifted from
the pitchblende of his ninety tomes a few pages of radioactive vul-
garity. But there are whole volumes which contain nothing more
offensive than a quotation from the apostle Paul, who "suffered the
loss of all things," and counted them but dung, that he might win
Christ.

A word may be said at this point also about Luther's drinking. He
imbibed and took some pride in his capacity. He had a mug around
which were three rings. The first he said represented the Ten Com-
mandments, the second the Apostles' Creed, and the third the Lord's
Prayer* Luther was highly amused that he was able to drain the glass
of wine through the Lord's Prayer, whereas his friend Agricola could
not get beyond the Ten Commandments. But Luther is not recorded
ever to have exceeded a state of hilarity.

VIEWS OF MARRIAGE

But to return to marriage. The Luther who got married in order
to testify to his faith actually founded a home and did more than
any other person to determine the tone of German domestic relations
for the next four centuries. We may conveniently at this point con-
sider his views on marriage. Here as elsewhere he walked in the steps
of Paul and Augustine. His position with regard to marriage was tinc-

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THE SCHOOL FOR CHARACTER

tured throughout by patriarchalism. According to Luther the man
is the head of the wife because he was created first. She is to give
him not only love but also honor and obedience. He is to rule her
with gentleness, but he is to rule. She has her sphere, and she can do
more with the children with one finger than he with two fists. But she
is to confine herself to her sphere. If Luther did not say that children,
church, and kitchen are the province of women, he did say that women
have been created with large hips in order that they should stay at home
and sit on them. Children are subject to parents and especially to the
father, who exercises in the household the same sort of authority as
does the magistrate in the state. Disrespect for parents is a breach of
the Ten Commandments. On one occasion Luther refused to forgive
his son for three days, although the boy begged his pardon and Katie
and others interceded. The point was that the boy in disobeying his
father had offended the majesty of God. If only Luther could have
left God out of it now and then, he would have been more humane.
Yet it must be remembered that in his judgment the apple should al-
ways lie alongside of the rod.

The whole institution of marriage was set by Luther within the
framework of family relationships. There was no room left for the
exercise of unbridled individualism. Matings should be made by fami-
lies; and whereas parents should not force children to repulsive unions,
children in turn should not, because of infatuations, resist reasonable
choices on the part of their elders. This whole picture was carried
directly over from the Middle Ages, in which Catholic sacramcntalism
and agrarian society tended to make of marriage an institution for
the perpetuation of families and the preservation of properties. The
romantic revolution of the Courts of Love in France was at first ex~
tramatrimonial, and the combination of romance and marriage was
effected only during the Renaissance.

To these currents Luther was entirely a stranger. His ideal was
Rebecca, who accepted the mate selected for her by the family, Jacob
was reprehensible in his eyes because after receiving Leah, who bore
him children, he worked yet seven other years out of infatuation for
the pretty face of Rachel. Luther was glad, however, of this failing

299

HERE I STAND

because it proved that he was saved by faith and not by works. But if
in this respect Luther followed the medieval view, on other counts
he broke with it, and notably in the rejection of virginity as an ideal.
By this move the way was open for the romanticizing and refinement
of marriage. But its immediate effect was rather the contrary. In Lu-
ther's early polemic, marriage was reduced to the most elemental
physical level because in order to repulse ecclesiastical interference
Luther insisted that sexual intercourse is as necessary and inevitable as
eating and drinking. Those not gifted with chastity must find gratifi-
cation. To refuse them is to prefer fornication to wedlock. In inter-
preting these words, however, one must be careful. Luther did not
really mean that external chastity is impossible, but merely that without
sexual satisfaction many will be tormented by desire, and for that
reason marriage is a purer state than monasticism. The controversial
tracts, however, up to 1525 are certainly unguarded in creating the
impression that the sole object of marriage is to serve as a remedy for
sin.

But after his own wedding the emphasis shifted, and he began to

portray marriage as a school for character. In this sense it displaces the

monastery, which had been regarded by the Church as the training

ground of virtue and the surest way to heaven. Luther in rejecting all

earning of salvation did not exclude exercise in fortitude, patience,

charity, and humility. Family life is exacting. The head of the house

has the lifelong worry over daily bread. The wife has the bearing of

children. During pregnancy she suffers from dizziness, headache,

nausea, toothache, and swelling of the legs* In travail her husband may

comfort her by saying, "Think, dear Greta, that you are a woman and

your work is pleasing to God. Rejoice in his will. Bring forth the child.

Should you die, it is for a noble work and in obedience to God. If you

were not a woman, you should wish to be one, that you might suffer

and die in so precious and noble a work of God/' The rearing of

children is a trial for both parents. To one of his youngsters Luther

said, "Child, what have you done that I should love you so? You have

disturbed the whole household with your bawling." And when a baby

cried for an hour and the parents were at the end of their resources,

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THE SCHOOL FOR CHARACTER

he remarked, "This is the sort of thing that has caused the Church
fathers to vilify marriage. But God before the last day has brought
back marriage and the magistracy to their proper esteem." The mother
of course has the brunt of it. But the father may have to hang out the
diapers, to the neighbors' amusement. "Let them laugh, God and the
angels smile in heaven."

There are vexations between the married couple. "Good God,"
ejaculated Luther, "what a lot of trouble there is in marriage! Adam
has made a mess of our nature. Think of all the squabbles Adam and
Eve must have had in the course of their nine hundred years. Eve
would say, 'You ate the apple,' and Adam would retort, Tou gave it

to me.' "

Luther once at the table was expatiating with gusto in response
to student questions. When he paused, Katie broke in, "Doctor, why
don't you stop talking and eat?"

"I wish," snapped Luther, "that women would repeat the Lord's
Prayer before opening their mouths." The students tried to get him
on the track again, but he was derailed for that meal.

On occasion Katie could have well returned the compliment. Once
she was praying out loud for rain, and Luther broke in, "Yes, why not,
Lord? We have persecuted thy Word and killed thy saints* We
have deserved well of thee."

Part of the difficulty was that the rhythm of work and rest did not
coincide for Luther and his wife. After a day with children, animals,
and servants, she wanted to talk with an equal; and he, after preach-*
ing four times, lecturing and conversing with students at meals, wanted
to drop into a chair and sink into a book. Then Katie would start in,
"Herr Doktor, is the prime minister of Prussia the Duke's brother?"

"All my life is patience," said Luther. "I have to have patience with
the pope, the heretics, my family, arid Katie." But he recognized
that it was good for him.

Nor should it be for a moment supposed that he excluded love from
marriage. Of course the Christian should love his wife, said Luther.
He is bound to love his neighbor as himself. His wife is his nearest
neighbor. Therefore she should be his dearest friend. And Luther

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HERE I STAND

signed himself to Katie, Dir lieb und treu. The greatest grace of God
is when love persists in marriage* "The first love is drunken. When the
intoxication wears off, then comes the real married love." The couple
should study to be pleasing to each other. In the old days this sound
advice was given to the bride: "My dear, make your husband glad
to cross his threshold at night"; and to the groom, "Make your wife
sorry to have you leave." "The dearest life is to live with a godly,
willing;, obedient wife in peace and unity." "Union of the flesh does
nothing. There must also be union of manners and mind." "Katie, you
have a husband that loves you. Let someone else be empress."

When Katie was ill, Luther exclaimed, "Oh, Katie, do not die and
leave me,"

When he was ill and thought he was about to die, he turned to his
wife. "My dearest Katie, if it be God's will accept it. You are mine.
You will rest assured of that, and hold to God's word. I did want to
write another book on baptism, but God's will be done. May he
care for you and Hans."

Katie answered, "My dear Doctor, if it is God's will I would rather
have you with our Lord than here. But I am not thinking just of
myself and Hans. There are so many people that need you* But don't
worry about us. God will take care of us."

CONSOLATIONS OF HOME

Luther thoroughly enjoyed his home. Once his colleague Jonas
remarked that he saw the blessing of God in fruit and for that reason
had hung a cherry bough above his table. Luther said, "Why don't
you think of your children? They are in front of you all the time,
and you will learn from them more than from a cherry bough." But
there was no sentimentality in what Luther expected him to learn.
"O dear God, how Adam must have loved Cain, and yet he turned
out to be the murderer of his brother." When Luther looked at his
family in 1538, he remarked, "Christ said we must become as little
children to enter the kingdom of heaven. Dear God, this is too much.
Have we got to become such idiots?" One wonders whether the chil-
dren were ever minded to wonder who was the idiot when Luther

302

THE SCHOOL FOR CHARACTER

cut up Hans's pants to mend his own. Yet what child would not
cheerfully forgive a father who wrote to him a letter like this?
On August 22, 1530, Luther wrote to Hans, then four years old:

My dearest son:

I am glad to know that you learn well and pray hard. Keep on, my
lad, and when I come home, I'll bring you a whole fair.

I know a lovely garden where many children in golden frocks gather
rosy apples under the trees, as well as pears, cherries, and plums. They
sing, skip, and are gay. And they have fine ponies with golden bridles
and silver saddles. I asked the gardener who were these children, and he
said, "They are the children who like to pray and learn and be good."
And I said, "Good man, I too have a son, and his name is Hans Luther.
Couldn't he come into the garden, too, and eat the rosy apples and the
pears and ride a fine pony and play with these children?" And the man
said, "If he likes to pray and learn and be good, he too may come into
the garden, and Lippus and Jost [the sons of Melanchthon and Jonas] as
well; and when they all come together, they shall have golden whistles
and drums and fine silver crossbows." But it was early, and the children
had not yet had their breakfasts, so I couldn't wait for the dance. I said
to the man, "I will go at once and write all this to my clear son Hans that he
may work hard, pray well, and be good, so that he too may come into
this garden. But he has an Aunt Lena he'll have to bring too." "That will
be all right," said he. "Go and write this to him."

So, my darling son, study and pray hard and tell Lippus and Jost to do
this too, so that you may all come together into the garden. May the
dear God take care of you. Give my best to Auntie Lena and give her a
kiss for me.

Your loving father,
MARTIN LUTHER

Luther reveled in household festivities and may well have composed
for Hans and Lenchen the Christmas pageant Von Hhnwcl Uoch
with its delightful, childlike quality. Equally charming is this brief
carol:

Our little Lord, we give thce praise
That thou has deigned to take our ways.
Born of a maid a man to be,
And all the angels sing to thee.

303

The eternal Father's Son he lay

Cradled in a crib of hay.

The everlasting God appears

In our frail flesh and blood and tears.

What the globe could not enwrap
Nestled lies in Mary's lap.
Just a baby, very wee,
Yet Lord of all the world is he.

When Magdalena was fourteen years old, she lay upon her deathbed.
Luther prayed, "O God, I love her so, but thy will be done." And
turning to her, "Magdalenchen, my little girl, you would like to stay
with your father here and you would be glad to go to your Father in
heaven?"

And she said, "Yes, dear father, as God wills.**

And Luther reproached himself because God had blessed him
as no bishop had been blessed in a thousand years, and yet he could
not find it in his heart to give God thanks. Katie stood off, overcome
by grief; and Luther held the child in his arms as she passed on. When
she was laid away, he said, "Du liebes Lenichen, you will rise and shine
like the stars and the sun. How strange it is to know that she is at peace
and all is well, and yet to be so sorrowful!'*

304

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THE CHURCH TERRITORIAL

OWEVER much Luther's activity may have been
curtailed by defections, he did found a church.
Feverish missionary activity was to win most
of northern Germany within a decade for
the Reform. This success was achieved through
a wave of propaganda unequaled hitherto and
in its precise form never repeated. The pri-
mary tools were the tract and the cartoon.
The number of pamphlets issued in Germany in the four years 1521
through 1524 exceeds the quantity for any other four years of
German history until the present. This is not to say, of course, that
there was more reading than after the introduction of the newspaper
and periodical, but only that the tracts were more numerous. In all
this Luther himself took the lead, and his own pamphlets in the
vernacular run into the hundreds; but a vast cohort assisted him, and
the printers who brought out these highly controversial materials
were an intrepid breed who risked their establishments and their
lives. The cohesiveness and adroitness of this underground is striking-
ly exemplified in the case of a press which issued, without any identi-
fying marks, an attack on the Bishop of Constance for tolerating
and taxing priests' bastards. Two hundred other works can be traced
by the paper and the type to this press, and yet its identity has never
yet been disclosed. The Catholics of course retaliated in kind, though
by no means in equal volume.

305

HERE I STAND
DISSEMINATION OF THE REFORM

A brief glance at the content of this pamphleteering is revealing
alike for the methods and the selection of themes for popular dis-
semination. All the external abuses of the Roman Church were easy
to lampoon. The familiar theme of the contrast between Christ and
the pope was exploited. Christ in a skit is made to say, "I have not
where to lay my head." The pope comments, "Sicily is mine. Corsica
is mine. Assisi is mine. Perugia is mine." Christ: "He who believes
and is baptized will be saved." Pope: "He who contributes and re-
ceives indulgences will be absolved." Christ: "Feed my sheep."
Pope: "I shear mine." Christ: "Put up your sword." Pope: "Pope
Julius killed sixteen hundred in one day." In a cartoon the pope
in armor on a war horse accompanied by a devil drops his lance on
seeing Christ on a donkey carrying a large cross.

Monasticism, images, and magic received many gibes. "Three
finches in a birdhouse praise God more joyfully than one hundred
monks in a cloister." A pamphleteer describes an image of the Virgin
with the head hollowed out and needle holes in the eyes, through
which water could be squirted to make her weep. A Catholic mother
in Swabia had sent to her son studying at Wittenberg a little wax
lamb marked Agnus Dei to protect him against mishap. His reply
to her was printed in 1523.

THREE POLEMICAL CARTOONS

1. CHRIST DISARMS THE POPE

306

2. LUTHER AND LUCIFER IN LKAGUK

HERE I STAND

Liebe Mutter:

You should not be upset over Dr. Martin Luther's teaching, nor worried
about me. It is safer here than in Swabia. I am grateful to you for sending
me the little wax Agnus Dei, to protect me against being shot, cut, and

3. THE DEVIL DELIVERS A DECLARATION OF WAR TO LUTHER

from falling, but honestly it won't do me any good* I cannot set my
faith on it because God's Word teaches me to trust only in Jesus Christ.
I am sending it back. We'll try it out on this letter and see whether it is
protected from tampering. I don't thank you one bit less, but I pray
God you won't believe any more in sacred salt and holy water and all this
devil's tomfoolery. I hope you won't give the wax lamb to my brother.
And dearest mother, I hope father will let me stay longer in Wittenberg.
Read Dr. Martin Luther's New Testament. It is on sale at Leipzig. I am

308

THE CHURCH TERRITORIAL

going to buy a brown hat at Wittenberg. Love to my dear father and
brother and sisters.

The tracts did not forget to extol Luther. In one of the pamphlets
a peasant, meeting a resplendent figure, inquires whether he is God.
"No," comes the answer, "I am a fisher of men, Peter by name, and
I have just come from Wittenberg, where in God's good pleasure my
fellow apostle Martin Luther has arisen to tell the people the truth
that I never was the bishop of Rome, nor was I ever a bloodsucker
of the poor, for I had neither silver nor gold."

The Devil was called in to assist both sides. A Catholic cartoon
shows him whispering into the ear of his confidant, Martin Luther.
On the other hand a Reformation cut depicts Luther at his desk when
the Devil breaks in with a letter which reads:

We Lucifer, lord of eternal darkness and ruler of all the kingdoms of
the world, declare to you, Martin Luther, our wrath and displeasure. We
have learned from our legates, Cardinals Campeggio and Lang, the dam-
age you have done in that you have revived the Bible which at our
behest has been little used for the last four hundred years. You have per-
suaded monks and nuns to leave the cloisters in which formerly they
served us well, and you are yourself an apostate from our service. There-
fore we will persecute you with burning, drowning, and beheading*
This is a formal declaration of war, and you will receive no other notice.
Sealed with our hellish seal in the City of Damnation on the last day of
September, 1524.

The drama reinforced the tract. A play disclosed a conspiracy to
overthrow the kingdom of Christ through the erection of the papacy
with such success that Satan invited the pope and his satellites to a
banquet. When they were sated with roast princes and sausages made
from the blood of the poor, a messenger broke in with the news that
justification by faith was being preached at Wittenberg* Hell was
thrown into confusion, and Christ took over.

These examples illustrate the attack on Romish abuses. Luther's
positive teaching was less graphic and more difficult to popularize^

309

HERE I STAND

but Hans Sachs, the shoemaker poet of Niirnberg, succeeded not
badly in rhyming couplets on Luther as "The Wittenberg Nightin-
gale":

Luther teaches that we all
Are involved in Adam's fall.
If man beholds himself "within,
He feels the bite and curse of sin.
When dread, despair, and terror seize,
Contrite he falls upon his knees.
Then breaks for him the light of day.
Then the gospel may have sway.
Then sees he Christ of God the Son,
Who for us all things has done.
The law fulfilled, the debt is paid,
Death overcome, the curse allayed,
Hell destroyed, the devil bound,
Grace for us with God has found.
Christ, the Lamb, removes all sin.
By faith alone in Christ we win*

By such simple summaries Luther's teaching was taken to the
common man in every walk of life. When Luther was reproached for
making his appeal to the laity, one of the pamphleteers replied:

You subtle fools, I tell you there are now at Niirnberg, Augsburg, Ulm,
in Switzerland, and in Saxony wives, maidens, and maids, students, hand-
workers, tailors, shoemakers, bakers, knights, nobles, and princes such as
the Elector of Saxony, who know more about the Bible than aU the
schools of Paris and Cologne and all the papists in the world*

PRACTICAL CHURCH PROBLEMS

But this very dissemination of the gospel raised many practical
problems as to the organization of the Church. Luther's views on
that subject had never been clarified. The true Church for him was
always the Church of the redeemed, known only to God, manifest
here and there on earth, small, persecuted and often hidden, at any
rate scattered and united only in the bond of the spirit. Such a view

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THE CHURCH TERRITORIAL

could scarcely issue in anything other than a mystical fellowship
devoid of any concrete form. This was what Luther meant by the
kingdom of Christ. He did not pretend that it could be actualized,
but he was not prepared to leave the Church disembodied. The next
possibility was to gather together such ardent souls as could be
assembled in a particular locality, and Luther came close to forming
such an association in 1522 when he instructed those who desired
communion in both kinds to receive it apart from the rest. After
such communion became the common practice, he still desired to
gather true believers into an inner fellowship, but not at the price
of abandoning the church comprising the community. He would
rather form a cell within the structure of the comprehensive body.
The practical difficulties, however, in his judgment were insuperable,
and by 1526 he declared his dream to be impossible. On that score
he was mistaken, because the Anabaptists succeeded, but they did so
by making a clean break with the church territorial. Luther's dilemma
was that he wanted both a confessional church based on personal
faith and experience, and a territorial church including all in a given
locality. If he were forced to choose, he would take his stand with
the masses, and this was the direction in which he moved.

To do so required some efforts in the direction of organization.
By 1527 the whole of electoral Saxony could be regarded as evan-
gelical. At many points the abandonment of the old ways had
produced confusion. Notably was this the case at the point of
ecclesiastical properties and finances. Cloisters had been abandoned.
What then should become of their endowments and revenues? The
donors in some instances had been dead for centuries, and the heirs
were beyond identification. The lands were in danger of expropria-
tion by powerful neighbors, and revenues in any case declined
because the peasants were indisposed to surrender the produce after
the object had been altered. Secondly, the liturgical reforms had
engendered chaos, because Luther was so averse to uniformity. Each
village and even each church had its own variety. Soon within the
very same city the several churches exhibited diversity, and even a

HERE I STAND

single church might vary in its practice* To those whose sense of
religious security depended upon hallowed usage, such variety and
unpredictability were genuinely disturbing. Luther began to feel
that uniformity would have to be established, at least within the limits
of each town.

Worst of all, differences in doctrine imperiled the public peace.
Remnants of Catholicism survived, and Zwinglianism and Anabap-
tism were infiltrating. Such was the public temper that positive
strife ensued. For this Luther saw no solution other than that one
religion only should be publicly celebrated in a given locality. How
to bring this to pass was by no means clear in his mind, because
he was impelled by conflicting principles. He regarded the mass as
idolatry and blasphemy, but he would compel no one to the faith.
He was driven to the recognition of the rights of rival confessions.
The outcome was the territorial church, in which the confession was
that of the majority in a given locality, and the minority were free
to migrate to favorable terrain. Whether this principle should apply
only to the Catholics or also to the sectaries was another question.

But who should take the initiative in terminating the confusion?
Hitherto Luther had been inclined to Congregationalism and had
stoutly objected to the dismissal of Zwilling from Zwickau by a
patron against the wishes of the people. But independent local con-
gregations were not in a position to cope with problems affecting
several areas. These would have been handled by the bishops, but
the bishops had not embraced the reform; and even if they had,
Luther would not have accorded to them their ancient functions
because he had come to be persuaded that in the New Testament
every pastor was a bishop. Hence in more than jest he referred to
his colleagues as "the bishop of Lochau or the bishop of Torgau,"
Some substitute, then, would have to be devised for the bishop.
The answer was to create the office of superintendent, but how and
by whom should he be chosen? If by the churches, who could call
them together?

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THE CHURCH TERRITORIAL
THE GODLY PRINCE

To all these questions Luther saw no answer other than for
the time being to call upon the prince. He should act not as a
magistrate, but as a Christian brother advantageously situated to
serve as an emergency bishop. All the church property should
temporarily at least be vested in him that he might redirect the
revenues for the support of ministers, teachers, and the poor. As
to uniformity in liturgy and faith, if the will of the majority was to
be determinative the situation called for a survey. Let Saxony be
investigated. Visitations in the old days had been conducted by the
bishops. Now let the elector appoint a commission for the purpose.
This was done; and Visitors, including theologians with Luther at
the head, and jurists to handle financial matters were appointed.
Melanchthon composed the visitation articles to be presented in
print to each of the clergy. Luther's preface stressed the provisional
nature of the whole plan, but the elector referred to the commissioners
as "'My Visitors," and Melanchthon's instructions were less a ques-
tionnaire than a program to be instituted, Luther had unwittingly
started down the road which was to lead to the territorial church
under the authority of the prince.

The Visitors in two months investigated thirty-eight parishes
inquiring into finances, behavior, forms of worship, and the faith.
In the matter of finances they discovered great confusion and neglect,
Parsonages were in a deplorable condition. One minister complained
that four gulden worth of books had been ruined through a leaky
roof. The Visitors decided to hold the parishioners responsible for
repairs. Morals were not too shocking. The liturgy required standard-
ization within limits. With regard to the faith, the determinative
point was the evangelical complexion of all Saxony. The implementa-
tion of the reform therefore could not be regarded as an imposition
of faith on a majority of the citizens. But there were dissenters, and
in the interests of the public peace two religions could not be per-
mitted to exist side by side. For that reason remnants of Catholicism
must disappear. Priests who declined to accept the reform were dis-

313

HERE I STAND

missed. If young, they were left to fend for themselves. If old, they
were pensioned. One minister on the arrival of the Visitors married
his cook. He was asked why he had not done so earlier, and he replied
that he expected her to die soon and he could then marry someone
younger. He was adjudged to be popish and was deposed. A case
was discovered in which a minister served two parishes, one in
Catholic and one in evangelical territory, and ministered to each
according to its respective rites. This arrangement was deemed un-
acceptable.

A sharp eye was kept on the sectaries, whether Zwinglian or
Anabaptist. But Luther was not yet willing to treat the Anabaptists
as the Zwinglians had already done in subjecting them to the death
penalty. As late as June, 1528, Luther replied to an inquiry as follows:

You ask whether the magistrate may kill false prophets. I am slow in a
judgment of blood even when it is deserved. In this matter I am terrified
by the example of the papists and the Jews before Christ, for when there
was a statute for the killing of false prophets and heretics, in time it
came about that only the most saintly and innocent were killed. ... I
cannot admit that false teachers are to be put to death. It is enough to
banish.

But even banishment required some adjustment of theory. Luther
still held stoutly to his objection to any compulsion to faith. But this
did not preclude restriction of the public profession of faith. The
outward manifestations of religion, he held, may be subjected to
regulation in the interests of orderliness and tranquillity. In all
this Luther never dreamed that he was subordinating the Church to
the state. The system later introduced in England which made the
king the head of the Church was hardly to his taste. But Christian
princes in his view were certainly responsible for fostering the
true religion. Luther's concern was always that the faith be un-
impeded. Anyone might help; no one might hinder. If the prince
would render assistance, let it be accepted. If he interfered, then let
him be disobeyed. This remained Luther's principle to the end of
his life. Nevertheless the sharp line of demarcation which he had

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THE CHURCH TERRITORIAL

delineated between the spheres of the Church and the state in his
tract On Civil Government in 1523 was already in process of being
blurred.

THE PROTEST

This was all the more the case because the evangelical cause was
menaced in the political terrain, and inevitably the defense fell to the
lay leaders. From now on the electors, princes, and delegates of the
free cities rather than the theologians were called upon to say, "Here
I stand." Luther himself was not so much the confessor as the mentor
of confessors. It was his to encourage, chide, guide, counsel, and
warn against undue concessions or unworthy means.

The fortunes of Lutheranism depended upon the decisions of the
German diets in conjunction with the emperor or his deputy
Ferdinand. A brief review is in order of the struggle of Lutheranism
for recognition and of the part played by Luther in the events from
the Diet of Worms through the Diet of Augsburg.

After the Diet of Worms each succeeding gathering of the German
estates had been forced to occupy itself with the Lutheran question.
First came the Diet of Niirnberg in 1522. It differed from the Diet
of Worms in that the middle party was gone and the implacables
confronted the intransigents. A Catholic group began to form in
terms even of political alignment. Duke George of Saxony was the
most militant and to inflame his colleagues took it upon himself to
copy with his own hand the most offensive passages from Luther's
successive works. Joachim of Brandenburg, the Hapsburgs, and the
Bavarians constituted the core.

On the other side the free imperial cities were strong for the re-
form. Augsburg and Strassburg, despite their bishops, were infected
with heresy. Niirnberg, where the diet was in session, declared that
though the pope had three more layers on his tiara he could not
induce them to abandon the Word. Frederick the Wise pursued his
usual discreet course, refrained from suppressing the mass in the
Castle Church at Wittenberg until the diet was over, but declined
equally to banish Luther.

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HERE I STAND

Each side overestimated the other. Ferdinand reported to the em-
peror that in Germany not one in a thousand was untainted by
Lutheranism. But Frederick's delegate reported that he was in danger
of being subjected to economic sanctions. With the forces so evenly
matched, even though there was no middle party, compromise was
the only possible solution. And the Catholics were the readier to
concede it because they could not gainsay the word of Frederick's
delegate that Luther had actually become a bulwark against disorder,
that without him his followers were quite unmanageable, and that his
return to Wittenberg against the wishes of his prince had been quite
imperative to allay chaos.

The diet at its session of March 6, 1523, contented itself with the
ambiguous formula that until the meeting of a general council Luther
and his followers should refrain from publishing and that nothing
should be preached other than the holy gospel in accord with the
interpretation of the writings approved by the Christian Church.
When the assembly reconvened the following year, again at Niirn-
berg, the accession of a new pope, Clement VII, a Medici quite as
secular as Leo X, made under the circumstances no difference. The
formula adopted on April 18, 1524, was: "The gospel should be
preached in accord with the interpretation of the universal Church.
Each prince in his own territory should enforce the Edict of Worms
in so far as he might be able." Here in germ was the principle of
aums regio eius religio, that each region should have its own religion.

Everyone knew that this was only a respite, and the Peasants' War
of 1525 intensified the conflict because the Catholic princes hanged
Lutheran ministers in batches. In consequence a new brand of
Lutheranism began to emerge, political in complexion. The genius
of the movement was a recent convert, Philip of Hesse. He was
young, impetuous, and always active. He it was who had been on his
toes in the Peasants' War when the Saxon princes were for leaving
the outcome to God. Philip was guided by three principles: he would
compel none to the faith; he would fight rather than suffer com-
pulsion for himself; and he would make an alliance with those of
another faith. He was now eager to demonstrate his attachment to the

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gospel. When the diet of the empire reassembled at Speyer in 1526,
Philip marched in with two hundred horsemen and Lutheran preach-
ers, who, being denied the pulpits, stood upon balconies of the inns
and addressed throngs of four thousand. Philip made evident his faith
by serving an ox on Friday. A representative from Strassburg wished
that he had chosen a more significant testimony than staging a
barbecue on a fast day. Such flagrant flaunting of ancient usage would
never have been tolerated by the emperor had he been free. But
having defeated France in 1525, he was subsequently embroiled with
the pope and unable to attend the diet. The outcome was another tem-
porizing measure. Each member was left on the religious question
to act "as he would have to answer to God and the emperor," This
was practically a recognition of the territorial principle.

This respite lasted for three years, during which time most of
northern Germany became Lutheran, and in the south the cities of
Strassburg, Augsburg, Ulm, and Niirnberg. Constance embraced the
reform, severed connections with the Hapsburgs, and joined the
Swiss. Basel came over to the reform in 1529.

This was the year of the Second Diet of Speyer. The significance
of this gathering is that it solidified the confessions and divided Ger-
many into two camps. On the eve of the diet such was by no means
the case. The Evangelicals were divided alike on faith and tactics.
Philip of Hesse, duped into believing that the Catholics meditated an
attack, had negotiated with France and Bohemia, the traditional
enemies of the House of Hapsburg, to the horror of the Saxon
princes who had no mind to dismember the empire. The Catholics
were divided on policy. The emperor was for the gloved hand,
his brother Ferdinand for the mailed fist. The Diet of Speyer brought
clarification, because Ferdinand chose to suppress the instructions of
his brother Charles, who again was absent, and demanded the ex-
tirpation of heresy. His attempt, even though but moderately suc-
cessful, solidified the Evangelicals. The time appeared propitious for
their suppression, because France, the pope, and the Turk were at the
moment either in hand or less menacing. But the diet was not too
amenable to Ferdinand's wishes, and the decree was far less severe

HERE I STAND

than it might have been. The Edict of Worms was reaffirmed only
for Catholic territories. Provisionally until the meeting of the general
council Lutheranism was to be tolerated in those regions where it
could not be suppressed without tumult. In Lutheran lands the prin-
ciple of religious liberty for Catholics must be observed, whereas
in Catholic lands the same liberty would not be extended to the
Lutherans. Against this invidious arrangement the Evangelicals pro-
tested, whence the origin of the name Protestant, They contended
that the majority of one diet could not rescind the unanimous action
of the previous assembly. They questioned whether this was the
intent of the emperor, and on that score they were correct. They
affirmed that they could not have two religions side by side in their
territories without menace to the public peace, and if their plea was
not heard, then "they must protest and testify publicly before God
that they could consent to nothing contrary to his Word."

Their stand has been variously misrepresented. In the Protestant
camp the emphasis has been all too much on the first word, "protest/*
rather than on the second, "testify." Above all else they were confess-
ing their faith. On the Catholic side the misrepresentation has been
flagrant. The historian Janssen said that they were protesting against
religious liberty. In a sense of course they were. Neither side was
tolerant, but the objection was to the inequality of the arrangement
which demanded liberty for Catholics and denied it to Protestants.
In this protest the Zwinglians and Lutherans were joined.

PROTESTANT ALLIANCE; THE MARBURG COLLOQUY

Philip of Hesse believed that the time had come to go further.
The rescript of this diet also was only provisional The Protestants
then should protect themselves by a common confession and a
common confederation. His hope was to unite the Lutherans, the
Swiss, and the Strassburgers, who took an intermediate position on
the Lord's Supper. But Luther was of no mind for a political con-
federation. "We cannot in conscience," said he, "approve such a
league inasmuch as bloodshed or other disaster may be the outcome,
and we may find ourselves so involved that we cannot withdraw

3x8

THE CHURCH TERRITORIAL

even though we would. Better be ten times dead than that our con-
sciences should be burdened with the insufferable weight of such
disaster and that our gospel should be the cause of bloodshed, when
we ought rather to be as sheep for the slaughter and not avenge or
defend ourselves."

The common confession was another matter, and Luther with
some misgivings accepted an invitation to assemble with a group
of German and Swiss theologians in Philip's picturesque castle on a
hillock overlooking the slender Lahn and the towers of Marburg.
A notable company assembled. Luther and Melanchthon represented
Saxony, Zwingli came from Zurich, Oekolampadius from Basel, Bucer
from Strassburg, to name only the more outstanding. All earnestly
desired a union. Zwingli rejoiced to look upon the faces of Luther
and Melanchthon, and declared with tears in his eyes that there were
none with whom he would be more happy to be in accord. Luther
likewise exhorted to unity. The discussion commenced inauspicious-
ly, however, when Luther drew a circle with chalk upon the table
and wrote within it the words, "This is my body." Oekolampadius
insisted that these words must be taken metaphorically, because the
flesh profits nothing and the body of Christ has ascended into heaven.
Luther inquired why the ascent should not also be metaphorical
Zwingli went to the heart of the matter when he affirmed that flesh
and spirit are incompatible. Therefore the presence of Christ can
only be spiritual. Luther replied that flesh and spirit can be conjoined,
and the spiritual, which no one denied, does not exclude the physical.
They appeared to have arrived at a deadlock, but actually they had
made substantial gains, because Zwingli advanced from his view that
the Lord's Supper is only a memorial to the position that Christ is
spiritually present. And Luther conceded that whatever the nature of
the physical presence, it is of no benefit without faith. Hence any
magical view is excluded.

This approximation of the two positions offered hope for agree-
ment, and the Lutherans took the initiative in proposing a formula of
concord. They confessed that hitherto they had misunderstood the
Swiss. For themselves they declared "that Christ is truly present,

319

HERE I STAND

that is, substantively, essentially, though not quantitatively, qualita-
tively, or locally." The Swiss rejected this statement as not clearly
safeguarding the spiritual character of the Lord's Supper, because
they could not understand how something could be present but not
locally present. Luther told them that geometrical conceptions can-
not be used to describe the presence of God.

The common confession had failed. But then the Swiss proposed
that despite the disagreement intercommunion be practiced, and to
this "Luther momentarily agreed." This we know on the testimony
of Bucer, "until Melanchthon interposed out of regard for Ferdinand
and the emperor." This statement is extremely significant. It means
that Luther did not play the role of utter implacability commonly
ascribed to him, and was disposed to join with the Swiss until Melanch-
thon made him aware that to coalesce with the left would estrange the
right. Melanchthon still entertained a hope for the reform of all
Christendom and the preservation of the larger medieval unities
through a reconciliation of the Lutherans and the Catholics. The
alignment of Speyer did not seem to him definitive, but he sensed
that the price would be the repudiation of the sectaries. Luther was
far less sanguine as to the Catholics and preferred a consolidated Prot-
estantism, but he yielded to Melanchthon, the one friend who was
ever able to deflect him from an intransigent course. Luther's judg-
ment was ultimately to be confirmed; and when Melanchthon had ex-
hausted his efforts at conciliation with the Catholics, the line dropped
at Marburg was resumed and issued ia the Wittenberg Concord.

A united confession had failed. Intercommunion had failed. But
the confederation ought nevertheless to be possible, argued Philip
of Hesse. People can unite to defend the right of each to believe what
he will even though they are not altogether of the same persuasion.
His pleas were very plausible. They were referred for consideration
not only to the theologians but also to the lay leaders of Saxony. If
Luther is reproached for his willingness to accept so much help from
the state, we must recall that the statesmen of that day were Chris-
tian believers who were ready to stake everything upon their convic-
tions, and with much more to lose than Luther himself. It was the

320

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THK SitJNMiurs AT nu: MAHurtu;

Joannes Ot'*v;/j////ut////.v,
Caspar Ih'Mv, *l/iir/////w l.ntlw
Andreas Oawndcr, Stcf>!,\wtts /

HERE I STAND

chancellor of Saxony who composed the answer to Philip of Hesse.
The chancellor was not like Luther averse to any political alliance,
nor like Philip indifferent to a confessional basis. The arguments on
both sides were reviewed. In favor of the confederation it might be
said that among the Zwinglians were doubtless many good Christians
who did not agree with Zwingli, and in any case a political alliance
could be made even with the heathen. To this the reply was that an
alliance with the heathen would be more defensible than an alliance
with apostates. The faith is supreme. Therefore the considerable as-
sistance which might be rendered by the Swiss must be renounced
and the outcome left entirely in the hands of God.

This left the Swiss to take care of themselves. In the second Kappel
War in 1531 Zwingli fell sword in hand on the field of battle. Luther
considered his death a judgment upon him because as a minister he
wielded the sword.

THE AUGSBURG CONFESSION

The Lutherans were left also to take care of themselves. In 1530
Emperor Charles was at last free to come to Germany. Having hum-
bled France and the pope, he approached Germany with a gracious
invitation that each should declare himself on the score of religion,
but with the intent not to spare severe measures should the milder fail.
Luther was not permitted to attend the diet. For six months he was
again "in the wilderness" as he had been at the Wartburg, this time
in another castle called the Feste Coburg. He was not quite so lonely
because he was attended by his secretary, from whose pen we have
a little glimpse of the doctor in a report sent to his wife.

Dear and gracious Mrs. Luther:

Rest assured that your lord and we are hale and hearty by God's
grace. You did well to send the doctor the portrait [of his daughter
Magdalena], for it diverts him from his worries. He has nailed it on the
wall opposite the table where we eat in the elector's apartment. At first
he could not quite recognize her. "Dear me," said he, u Lenchen is too
dark*" But he likes the picture now, and more and more comes to see
that it is Lenchen. She is strikingly like Hans in the mouth, eyes, and

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THE CHURCH TERRITORIAL

nose, and in fact in the whole face, and will come to look even more like
him. I just had to write you this.

Do not be concerned about the doctor. He is in good trim, praise God.
The news of his father's death shook him at first, but he was himself
again after two days. When the letter came, he said, "My father is dead."
He took his psalter, went to his room, and wept so that he was in-
capacitated for two days, but he has been all right since. May God be
with Hans and Lenchen and the whole household.

As at the Wartburg, Luther devoted himself to biblical studies and
likewise to admonitions and advice to those who were conducting the
defense of the evangelical cause at Augsburg. His absence and their
success were the manifest proof that the movement could survive
without him. The great witness was borne this time not by the monk
of Wittenberg or even by the ministers and theologians, but by the
lay princes who stood to lose their dignities and their lives. When
the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles the Fifth, approached the city of
Augsburg, the dignitaries went out to receive him. As the notables
knelt, barehea4ed, for the benediction of Cardinal Campeggio, the
Elector of Saxony stood bolt upright. On the following day came
one of the most colorful processions in the history of medieval pagean-
try. In silk and damask, with gold brocade, in robes of crimson and
the colors appropriate to each house, came the electors of the empire
followed by the most exalted of their number, John of Saxony, carry-
ing in accord with ancient usage the glittering naked sword of the
emperor. Behind him marched Albert, the Archbishop of Mainz,
the Bishop of Cologne, King Ferdinand of Austria, and his brother
the emperor. They marched to the cathedral, where the emperor and
all the throng knelt before the high altar. But Elector John of Saxony
and the landgrave, Philip of Hesse, remained standing. On the mor-
row the emperor took the Lutheran princes aside. John and Philip
were of course among them, and also the aged George, the margrave
of Brandenburg. The emperor told them that their ministers must
not preach in Augsburg. The princes refused. The emperor insisted
that at any rate the ministers must not preach polemical sermons. The
princes again refused. The emperor informed them that the following

323

HERE I STAND

day would see the Corpus Christi procession, in which they would
be expected to march. The princes once more refused. The emperor
continued to insist, when the margrave stepped forward and said,
"Before I let anyone take from me the Word of God and ask me to
deny my God, I will kneel and let him strike off my head."

The emperor, despite all these rebuffs, was willing to let the Prot-
estants state their case. The commission fell to Melanchthon. He was
still hopeful for the emperor and for the moderates in the Catholic
camp, led now by Albert, the Archbishop of Mainz, who had once
sent Luther a wedding present. To be sure Eck and Campeggio were
raving and disseminating lies and all manner of misrepresentation, but
after all they were not the whole Catholic Church.

Melanchthon himself had a deep streak of the Erasmian. He wished
neither to deny the faith of Martin Luther nor to be the man to re-
move the keystone and let fall the arch of Christendom. He sat in
his room and wept. At the same time he explored every avenue of
conciliation and even went so far as to say that the differences be-
tween the Lutherans and the Catholics were no more serious than
the use of German in the mass.

Luther was exceedingly concerned and wrote to him that the
difference between them was that Melanchthon was stout and Luther
yielding in personal disputes, but the reverse was true on public con-
troversies. Luther was thinking of the discussion at Marburg when he
had been concessive, Melanchthon obdurate. Now Melanchthon was
for recognizing even the pope, whereas Luther felt that there could
be no peace with the pope unless he abolished the papacy. The real
point was not between personal and public controversies, but in their
respective judgments of the left and of the right, Melanchthon in his
efforts to conciliate the Catholics was in danger of emasculating the
reform.

But he did not. The Augsburg Confession was his work, and in
the end it was as stalwart a confession as any made by the princes,
Luther was immensely pleased with it and thought its moderate tone
better than anything he could have achieved. In the first draft the
Augsburg Confession spoke only in the name of electoral Saxony,

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THE CHURCH TERRITORIAL

but in the final draft it confessed the faith of a united Lutheranism.
Even Philip of Hesse signed, despite his leanings to the Swiss. But
the statement on the Lord's Supper was such that the Swiss declined
and submitted a statement of their own. The Strassburgers also re-
fused to sign, and they too brought in another confession. In all there
were three Protestant statements of faith submitted at Augsburg.
The Anabaptists of course received no hearing at all. Yet despite
these divergences in the Evangelical ranks, the Augsburg Confes-
sion did much to consolidate Protestantism and to set it over against
Catholicism. One might take the date June 25, 1530, the day when
the Augsburg Confession was publicly read, as the death day of
the Holy Roman Empire. From this day forward the two confes-
sions stood over against each other, poised for conflict. Charles V
allowed the Evangelicals until April, 1531, to make their submission.
If at that time they declined, they would then feel the edge of the
sword.

Against this threat Luther addressed an appeal for moderation to
the leader of the conciliatory party in the Roman camp, his old op-
ponent and friend, Albert the Archbishop of Mainz, in the following
words:

Inasmuch as there is now no hope of unanimity in the faith, I humbly be-
seech your Grace that you will endeavor to have the other side keep the
peace, believing as they will and permitting us to believe this truth which
has been confessed and found blameless. It is well known that no one, be
he pope or emperor, should or can force others to believe, for God himself
has never yet seen fit to drive anyone by force to believe. How then
shall his miserable creatures presume to coerce men not only to faith
but to that which they themselves must regard as lies? Would to God
that your Grace or anyone else would be a new Gamaliel to commend
this counsel of peace.

Luther's counsel was taken not on principle but by reason of ne-
cessity, for the emperor was not to find himself again in a position to
intervene for another fifteen years.

325

CHAPTER NINETEEN

THE CHURCH TUTORIAL

ISITATION had established the outward form
of the Church, but Luther well knew that the
Church of the spirit cannot be engendered by
the arm of the magistrate. The true Christian
Church is the work of the Word communi-
cated by every available means. Early Lu-
ther sensed the need for a new translation of
the Scriptures from the original tongues into
idiomatic German. There must be likewise a body of instructional
material for the young. The liturgy would have to be revised to elimi-
nate popish abuses and to enlighten the people. Congregational singing
should be cultivated alike to inspire and instruct. The Bible, the cate-
chism, the liturgy, and the hymnbook thus constituted the needs, and
all four were to be met by Luther himself.

THE BIBLE TRANSLATION

For the translation of the Bible, Luther availed himself of the en-
forced leisure at the Wartburg to produce in three months a rendering
of the complete New Testament. The Old Testament came later. The
German Bible is Luther's noblest achievement, unfortunately untrans-
latable because every nation has its own direct version. For the Ger-
mans, Luther's rendering was incomparable. He leaped beyond the
tradition of a thousand years. There had been translations before him
of the Scripture into German, reaching back to the earliest transcrip-
tion of the Gothic tongue by Ulfilas. There were even portions of the
Bible translated not from the Latin Vulgate, but from the Hebrew

326

THE CHURCH TUTORIAL

and the Greek. But none had the majesty of diction, the sweep of
vocabulary, the native earthiness, and the religious profundity of Lu-
ther. "I endeavored," said he, "to make Moses so German that no one
would suspect he was a Jew."

The variety of German chosen as a basis was the court tongue of
electoral Saxony, enriched from a number of dialects with which
Luther had gained some familiarity in his travels. He went to incredible
pains to find words. The initial translation did not satisfy him. His
New Testament was first published in September, 1522, but he was
revising it to the day of his death in 1546. The last printed page on
which he ever looked was the proof of the latest revision. The Old
Testament was commenced after his return from the Wartburg. The
complete translation of the entire Bible did not appear until 1534.
This, again, was subject to constant reworking in collaboration with
a committee of colleagues.

Luther on occasion achieved the most felicitous rendering at the
first throw. At other times he had to labor. In that case he would first
make a literal translation in the word order of the original. Then he
would take each word separately and gush forth a freshet of synonyms.
From these he would select those which not only best suited the
sense but also contributed to balance and rhythm. All of this would
then be set aside in favor of a free rendering to catch the spirit. Finally
the meticulous and the free would be brought together. Sometimes he
was at a loss for terms and would set out in quest of words. In order
to name the precious stones in the twenty-first chapter of Revelation
he examined the court jewels of the elector of Saxony. For the coins
of the Bible he consulted the numismatic collections in Wittenberg.
When he came to describe the sacrifices of Leviticus and needed terms
for the inward parts of goats and bullocks, he made repeated trips to
the slaughterhouse and inquired of the butcher. The birds and beasts
of the Old Testament proved a hard knot. To Spalatin he wrote:

I am all right on the birds of the night owl, raven, horned owl, tawny
owl, screech owl and on the birds of prey vulture, kite, hawk, and
sparrow hawk. I can handle the stag, roebuck, and chamois, but what in

327

HERE I STAND

the Devil am I to do with the taragelaphus, pygargus, oryx, and
camelopard [names for animals in the Vulgate]?

Another problem was the translation of idioms. Here Luther in-
sisted that the idiom of one language must be translated into the equiva-
lent idiom of the other. He was scornful of the Vulgate translation,
"Hail, Mary, full of grace." "What German would understand that if
translated literally? He knows the meaning of a purse full of gold or
a keg full of beer, but what is he to make of a girl full of grace? I
would prefer to say simply, 'Liebe Maria? What word is more rich
than that word, 'liebe*?"

There is no doubt that it is a rich word, but its connotations are not
precisely the same as "endowed with grace," and Luther did not use
the word in his official version. Here is the problem of the translator.
Should he use always an indigenous word which may have a particular
local connotation? If the French call a centurion a gendarme, and the
Germans make a procurator into a burgomaster, Palestine has moved

CKANACH'S "JACOB WRESTLING WITH THE ANGPX"
328

THE CHURCH TUTORIAL

west. And this is what did happen to a degree in Luther's rendering.
Judea was transplanted to Saxony, and the road from Jericho to Je-
rusalem ran through the Thuringian forest. By nuances and turns of
expression Luther enhanced the graphic in terms of the local. When he
read, "There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city
of God," he envisaged a medieval town begirt with walls and towers,
surrounded by a moat through which coursed a living stream laving
with laughter the massive piers.

What the word could not do at this point, the pictures supplied. The
Luther Bibles were copiously illustrated, particularly for the earlier
portion of the Old Testament and for the book of Revelation in the
New Testament. The restriction of illustrations to these portions of
the Bible had become a convention in Germany. The Gospels and the
epistles were adorned only with initial letters. Why this should have

LEMBERGER'S ") A C:OB WRESTLING WITH THE ANGEL"
329

HERE I STAND

been the case is difficult to see. Certainly there was no objection to
illustrating the Gospels; witness Diirer's "Life of Mary," or the wood-
cuts of the Passion, or Schongauer's nativities. Within the conven-
tional limits Luther's Bible was richly illustrated. In the various
editions to appear during his lifetime there were some five hundred
woodcuts. They were not the choicest expressions of the art, but they
did Germanize the Bible, Moses and David might almost be mistaken
for Frederick the Wise and John Frederick.

An interesting development is to be observed in the illustrations from
one artist to another in the successive editions of the Luther Bible,
notably from Cranach to Lemberger. One senses something of the
transition from the Renaissance to baroque. Compare their renderings
of the wrestling of Jacob with the angel. Cranach has a balance of
spaces, with decorative background. Lemberger displays strains in ten-
sion, with even the trees participating in the struggle.

Unfortunately the illustrations for the book of Revelation were
made all too contemporary. The temptation was too strong to identify
the pope with Antichrist. In the first edition of the New Testament in
September, 1522, the scarlet woman sitting on the seven hills wears
the papal tiara. So also does the great dragon. The beast out of the
abyss has a monk's cowl. Fallen Babylon is plainly Rome. /There is no
mistaking the Belvedere, the Pantheon, and the Castelo dc St. Angelo.
Duke George was so enraged by these pictures that he sent a warm
protest to Frederick the Wise. In consequence, in the issue of Decem-
ber, 1522, the tiaras in the woodcuts were chiseled down to innocuous
crowns of a single layer, but other details were left unchanged and
attracted so little notice that Eniscr, Luther's Catholic opponent, ac-
tually borrowed the blocks from Cranach to illustrate his own Bible.
In the New Testament of 1530 Luther introduced an annotation ex-
plaining that the frogs issuing from the mouth of the dragon were his
opponents, Faber, Eck, and Emser, In the completed edition of the
whole Bible in 1534, after Frederick the Wise was dead, the wood-
cuts were done over and the papal tiaras restored.

THE CHURCH TUTORIAL
DOCTRINAL PROBLEMS IN TRANSLATION

The most difficult task in translating consisted not in making vivid
the scenes but in capturing the moods and ideas. "Translating is not
an art that everyone can practice. It requires a right pious, faithful,
diligent, God-fearing, experienced, practical heart." Luther did not
think to add that it requires an instructed head, but he had his ideas
about the Bible which in some measure affected alike what he did
and what he left undone. He did not attempt any minor harmoniza-
tion of discrepancies, because trivial errors gave him no concern. If on
occasion he could speak of every iota of Holy Writ as sacred, at other
times he displayed blithe indifference to minor blemishes, such as an
error in quotation from the Old Testament in the New Testament.
The Bible for him was not strictly identical with the Word of God.
God's Word is the work of redemption in Christ which became con-
crete in Scripture as God in Christ became incarnate in the flesh; and
as Christ by the incarnation was not denuded of human characteristics,
so the Scripture as the medium of the Word was not divested of hu-
man limitations. Hence Luther was not subject to the slightest temp-
tation to accommodate a gospel citation from the prophets to the text
of the Old Testament. No more was he concerned to harmonize the
predictions of Peter's denial with the accounts of the denial itself.

But when doctrinal matters were involved, the case was different.
Luther read the New Testament in the light of the Pauline message
that the just shall live by faith and not by works of the law. That this
doctrine is not enunciated with equal emphasis throughout the New
Testament and appears to be denied in the book of James did not es-
cape Luther, and in his preface to the New Testament of 1522 James
was stigmatized as "an epistle of straw." Once Luther remarked thai
he would give his doctor's beret to anyone who could reconcile
James and Paul. Yet he did not venture to reject James from the canor
of Scripture, and on occasion earned his own beret by effecting t
reconciliation. "Faith," he wrote, "is a living, restless thing. It cannoi
be inoperative. We are not saved by works; but if there be no works
there must be something amiss with faith." This was simply to put i

THE WHORE OF BABYLON IN THREE SUCCESSIVE
EDITIONS OF LUTHER'S BIBLE

RIGHT: In the New
Testament of September,
1522, she is shown rear-
ing the papal tiara.

Pauline construction upon James. The conclusion was a hierarchy of
values within the New Testament. First Luther would place the
Gospel of John, then the Pauline epistles and First Peter, after them
the three other Gospels, and in a subordinate place Hebrews, James,
Jude, and Revelation. He mistrusted Revelation because of its ob-
scurity. "A revelation/' said he, "should be revealing."

These presuppositions affected the translation but slightly. Yet oc-
casionally an overly Pauline turn is discernible. There is the famous
example where Luther rendered "justification by faith" as "justification
by faith alone." When taken to task for this liberty, he replied that
he was not translating words but ideas, and that the extra word was
necessary in German in order to bring out the force of the original.

LEFT: The papal tiara
elicited such a vigorous
remonstrance from Duke
George to Frederick the
Wise that he interposed,
and in the issue of De-
cember, 1522, the tiara
was reduced to an in-
nocuous single layer.

BELOW: In the Bible of
1534 after Frederick's
death the cut was done
over and the tiara re~
stored.

HERE I STAND

Throughout all the revisions of his lifetime he would never relinquish
that word "alone." In another instance he was more flexible. In 1522
he had translated the Greek words meaning "by the works of the
law" with German words meaning "by the merit of works." In 1527
he substituted a literal rendering. That must have hurt. He was an
honest workman, and successive revisions of the New Testament were
marked by a closer approximation to the original. And yet there were
places where Luther's peculiar views, without any inaccuracy, lent a
nuance to the rendering. In the benediction, "The peace of God,
which passeth all understanding," Luther translated, "The peace which
transcends all reason." One cannot exactly quarrel with that. He might
better have said, "which surpasses all comprehension," but he was so
convinced of the inadequacy of human reason to scale the heavenly
heights that he could not but see here a confirmation of his supreme
aversion.

If the New Testament was for Luther a Pauline book, the Old
Testament was a Christian book. Only the ceremonial law of the
Jews was abrogated. The moral law was still valid because it was in ac-
cord with the law of nature. But more significant than the ethic was
the theology. The Old Testament foreshadowed the drama of redemp-
tion. Adam exemplified the depravity of man. Noah tasted the wrath
of God, Abraham was saved by faith, and David exhibited contrition.
The pre-existent Christ was working throughout the Old Testament,
speaking through the mouths of the prophets and the psalmist. A strik-
ing witness to the Christological interpretation of the Old Testament
current in Luther's day is to be found in the illustrations of his Bible,
Among the hundreds of woodcuts the only portrayal of the nativity
of Jesus is located not in the Gospels, where one would expect to find
it, but on the title page to Ezckiel Reading the Old Testament in this
fashion Luther could not well escape Christianizing shades of meaning.
The "lovingkindness of the Lord" became "grace"; the "Deliverer of
Israel" became "the Saviour"; and "life" was rendered "eternal life."
That was why Bach could treat the Sixteenth Psalm as an Easter hymn.

Luther's liberties were greatest with the Psalms because here he was

334

THE CHURCH TUTORIAL

so completely at home. They were the record of the spiritual struggles
through which he was constantly passing. The favorite words of his
Anfechtungen could not be excluded. Where the English version of
Ps. 90 speaks of "secret sins" Luther has "unrecognized sins." He was
thinking of his fruitless efforts in the cloister to recall every wrong-
doing, that it might be confessed and pardoned. Where the English
translates, "So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our
hearts unto wisdom," Luther is blunt: "Teach us so to reflect on death
that we may be wise."

Luther so lived his way into the Psalms that he improved them. In
the original the transitions are sometimes abrupt and the meaning not
always plain. Luther simplified and clarified. When he came to a pas-
sage which voiced his wrestlings in the night watches, he was free
to paraphrase. Take his conclusion to the Seventy-third Psalm.

My heart is stricken and my bones fail, that I must be a fool and know
nothing, that I must be as a beast before thee. Nevertheless I will ever
cleave to thee. Thou holdest me by thy right hand and leadest me by thy
counsel. Thou wilt crown me at last with honor. If only I have that, I
will not ask for earth or heaven. When body and soul fail me, thou art
ever God, my heart's comfort and my portion.

The Bible, just as it stood in Luther's rendering, was a great educa-
tional tool; but more was needed, obviously for children but also for
adults, who were almost equally ignorant. The children should be
taught at church, at school, and at home; and to that end pastors,
teachers, and parents should receive prior training. Hence Luther's plea
that Catholic schools be replaced by municipal schools with a system of
compulsory education including religion. "The Scripture cannot be
understood without the languages," argued Luther, "and the languages
can be learned only in school. If parents cannot spare their children for
a full day, let them send them for a part. I would wager that in half
of Germany there are not over four thousand pupils in school, I would
like to know where we are going to get pastors and teachers three years
from now."

335

HERE I STAND

CATECHISMS

The mere training of pastors, teachers, and parents would, however,
not suffice. They must in turn be provided with a body of religious
literature adapted to children. The Middle Ages supplied little by way
of models because the catechisms had been for adults. The Humanists
had made a beginning, as in the Colloquies of Eras?m$, and the Bo-
hemian Brethren had a question book for children; but the material was
so scant that one can without exaggeration ascribe to the Reformation
the creation of the first body of religious literature for the young. Lu-
ther was so exceedingly busy that he attempted to delegate this assign-
ment to others, and they undertook it with zest. In the seven years
between his return to Wittenberg and the appearance of his own
catechisms his collaborators had produced materials comprising five
goodly volumes in a modern reprint.

For the most part they were crude and boiled down to about this:
"You are a bad child. You deserve to be punished forever in hell; but
since God has punished his Son Jesus Christ in your place, you can be
forgiven if you will honor, love, and obey God." That if bothered
Luther, because it restored the merit of man as in the penitential system.
Even Melanchthon moralized too much, for his manual was a compila-
tion of the ethical portions of the New Testament with the maxims of
the pagan sages. Some catechisms pitted the inner against the outer
word of Scripture, and some even spiritualized the sacraments. In other
words the radicals were appropriating the catechetical method. High
time that Luther undertook the task himself!

He produced two catechisms in the year 1529: the Large Catechism
for adults, with a long section on marriage, scarcely suitable for the
young; and the Small Cathechism for children. Both were built about
five points: the Ten Commandments as a mirror of sin, the Apostles'
Creed as a proclamation of forgiveness, the Lord's Prayer as an accep-
tance of mercy, and the two sacraments of baptism and the Lord's
Supper as channels of grace.

In the Large Cathechism the exposition was comparatively full and
the tone at times polemical The command to worship only the Lord

336

THE CHURCH TUTORIAL

gave an opportunity to upbraid the Catholic cult of the saints, whereas
the sections on the sacraments called for a refutation of the radicals.
The Small Catechism for children is devoid of all polemic, an inimitable
affirmation of faith. The section on the death of Christ stresses not the
substitution of penalty but the triumph over all the forces of darkness.

I believe in Jesus Christ . . . , who when I was lost and damned saved
me from all sin and death and the power of the Devil, not with gold and
silver but with his own precious, holy blood and his sinless suffering and
death, that I might belong to him and live in his kingdom and serve him
forever in goodness, sinlessness, and happiness, just as he is risen from
the dead and lives and reigns forever. That is really so.

Luther said that he would be glad to have all his works perish except
the reply to Erasmus and the catechism.

Do not think the catechism is a little thing to be read hastily and cast
aside. Although I am a doctor, I have to do just as a child and say word
for word every morning and whenever I have time the Lord's Prayer
and the Ten Commandments, the Creed and the Psalms. I have to do it
every day, and yet I cannot stand as I would. But these smart folk in one
reading want to be doctors of doctors. Therefore I beg these wise saints
to be persuaded that they are not such great doctors as they think. To
be occupied with God's Word helps against the world, the flesh, and the
Devil, and all bad thoughts. This is the true holy water with which to
exorcise the Devil.

Luther's intention was that the catechism should be used in church
as a basis for sermons, but more particularly in the home. The father
should check up on the children at least once a week and also on the
servants. If the children would not learn, they should not eat; if the
servants declined, they should be dismissed.

The catechisms were enlivened with quaint woodcuts of episodes
from the Bible suitable to each point. "I believe in God the Father
Almighty" naturally called for a view of the creation. "Hallowed be
thy name" was illustrated by a preaching scene. "Remember the Sab-
bath day" showed a devout group inside a church while outside a man

337

OUR FATHER

HALLOWED BE THY NAME

REMEMBER THE SABBATH DAY

THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY
NEIGHBOR'S WIFE

THE CHURCH TUTORIAL

was gathering wood. Luther was, however, no rigid Sabbatarian, and
incidentally he did not select these pictures. Excessively modest is the
cut accompanying the sixth commandment, where David with his
harp is seduced by the sight of Bathsheba having her feet washed. At
the close of the catechetical hour Luther suggested the singing of a
psalm or a hymn.

LITURGY

Another of Luther's great contributions lay in the field of public
worship, which he revised first in the interests of purity and then as
a medium of instruction. While still at the Wartburg he had come to
realize that some changes in the liturgy were imperative, and had ap-
plauded Carlstadt's initial endeavors. Yet Luther himself was very
conservative in such matters and desired to alter the beloved mass as
little as possible. The main point was that all pretension to human
merit should be excluded. Luther undertook in 1523 to make the
minimal revisions essential to evangelical doctrine. His Formula Missae
was in Latin. The canon of the mass disappeared because this was
the portion in which the reference to sacrifice occurred. Luther re-
stored the emphasis of the early Church upon the Lord's Supper as an
act of thanksgiving to God and of fellowship through Christ with God
and with each other. This first Lutheran mass was solely an act of wor-
ship in which true Christians engaged in praise and prayer, and were
strengthened in the inner man.

But speedily Luther came to the recognition that an act of worship
was not possible for many in the congregation without explanation.
The Church embraced the community, and the congregation consisted
of the townsfolk of Wittenberg and of the peasants from the villages
round about. How 'much would these peasants understand of his re-
vision of the Latin mass? They would of course recognize the change
involved in giving to them the wine as well as the bread, and they
would sense that something had altered when the inaudible portions
were discontinued. But since it was still all in a foreign tongue they
would hardly perceive that the idea of sacrifice was gone. The mass

339

HERE I STAND

therefore would have to be in German. Others had felt this earlier
than Luther, and Miintzer had prepared a German mass which Luther
liked so long as he did not know it was Miintzer's. Gradually Luther
came to the conclusion that he must undertake the revision himself.
In 1526 he came out with the German mass.

Everything was in German save for the Greek refrain, "Kyrie
eleison." The changes left intact the essential structure; and a Swiss
visitor in 1536, accustomed to simpler services, felt that the Lutherans
had retained many elements of popery: genuflections, vestments, veer-
ings to the altar or the audience, lectern and pulpit on opposite sides.
Even the elevation of the elements was retained until 1542, To Luther
all such points were indiff erent. He would not substitute a new formal-
ism for an old and allowed very wide latitude and variation in liturgical
matters. The main point was that in the German as in the Latin the
canon of the mass was gone. In its place there was a simple exhortation
to receive communion. But the whole tone of the service was altered
in two respects: there was more of the scriptural and more of the in-
structional. With the canon removed the Gospel and Epistle assumed
a more prominent position; the words of institution were given in Ger-
man; the sermon occupied a larger place, and not infrequently the
notices were as long as the sermon. The church thus became not only
the house of prayer and praise but also a classroom.

MUSIC

The most far-reaching changes in the liturgy were with regard to
the music, and those at three points: the chants intoned by the priest,
the chorals rendered by the choir, and the hymns sung by the con-
gregation. Luther set himself to revise all three- He was competent, if
not to execute, at least to direct and inspire, since he could play the
lute and sing even though he did not regard himself as skilled in com-
position. Modern specialists are not agreed as to how many of the
musical settings to his hymns may be his own. Ten are commonly
ascribed to him. Certainly he knew how to compose simple melodies,
to harmonize and arrange. Above all else he was able to inspire, because
his enthusiasm for music was so great. He said:

340

THE CHURCH TUTORIAL

Music is a fair and lovely gift of God which has often wakened and
moved me to the joy of preaching. St. Augustine was troubled in con-
science whenever he caught himself delighting in music, which he took
to be sinful. He was a choice spirit, and were he living today would agree
with us. I have no use for cranks who despise music, because it is a gift
of God. Music drives away the Devil and makes people gay; they forget
thereby all wrath, unchastity, arrogance, and the like. Next after theology
I give to music the highest place and the greatest honor. I would not
exchange what little I know of music for something great. Experience
proves that next to the Word of God only music deserves to be extolled
as the mistress and governess of the feelings of the human heart. We
know that to the devils music is distasteful and insufferable. My heart
bubbles up and overflows in response to music, which has so often re-
freshed me and delivered me from dire plagues.

Perhaps the fact that Diirer was old and Luther young when each
embraced the reform may explain in a measure why in German Lu-
theranism pictorial art declined in favor of the musical expression of
the faith.

The first melodic portion of the liturgy to be reformed was the part
intoned by the priest, including the Epistle and Gospel. Since Luther
was so desirous that every word of Scripture should be distinctly heard
and understood, one wonders why he did not discontinue the music
entirely in favor of reading in a natural voice. The answer lies in the
architectural structure, which was more conducive to the word sung
than to the word spoken. But Luther did employ every device to bring
out the meaning. Only one note should be used for one syllable, and
the organ accompaniment should not obscure the words. Throughout
the service the organ was used only antiphonally. The Gospel texts
should not be conflated, and the seven words of Christ from the cross
were not to be blended from all four Gospels. The Lutheran tradition
explains why Bach should write a St. Matthew's Passion. The meaning
should be further emphasized by dramatic coloring. The Gregorian
chants for the Epistle and the Gospel were monotone save for the
lowering of the voice at the end. Luther introduced dijff erent registers
for the narrative of the evangelist, the words of Christ, and the words
of the apostles. The mean register he set high because his own voice was

HERE I STAND

tenor, but he explained that he was offering only suggestions and each
celebrant should discover and adapt the musical setting to suit his own
liturgical range. Again the modes should be varied: the sixth should
be used for the Gospel because Christ was joyful, and the eighth for
the Epistle because Paul was more somber. This terminology calls for
a word of explanation. Today we have a number of keys and only two
modes, the major and minor. The intervals in all keys are those of C,
conserved by the use of accidentals in transposing. In the sixteenth cen-
tury eight modes were in vogue with different intervals formed by
starting on each note of the octave and ascending without accidentals.
The attention which Luther in all these respects devoted to musical
settings for the prose text of the Scripture in the vernacular prepared
the way for the oratorios.

The degree to which he was assisted in his task appears in an account
by his collaborator Walther, who wrote:

When Luther forty years ago wanted to prepare his German mass, he
requested of the Elector of Saxony and Duke John that Conrad Rupff
and I be summoned to Wittenberg, where he might discuss music and
the nature of the eight Gregorian psalm modes. He prepared the music for
the Epistles and Gospels, likewise for the words of institution of the true
body and blood of Christ; he chanted these for me and asked me to
express my opinion of his efforts. At that time he kept me in Wittenberg
for three weeks; we discussed how the Epistles and Gospels might
properly be set. I spent many a pleasant hour singing with him and often
found that he seemingly could not weary of singing or even get enough
of it; in addition he was always able to discuss music eloquently.

The second element to be revised was the choral for the choir.
Here a rich background was available in the polyphonic religious
music of the Netherlands which Luther admired above all other. The
melody of the Gregorian chant was taken as a base, and about it
three, four, or more voices rotated in counterpoint with elaborate
embellishments. Luther himself in the preface to the musical work
of 1538 gathered into a single passage all of his praises of music
together with the most apt description ever penned of the Nether-
landish polyphonic choral:

342

THE CHURCH TUTORIAL

-A

4t ft*

A ^

A. A^/"

TPnfer

*-+-

*t3

nfc effcr; ^a0 ifl mpy it Ic^b / &er fur

Soldjs c$ut fo offt

To all lovers of the liberal art of music Dr. Martin Luther wishes grace
and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. With all my
heart I would extol the precious gift of God in the noble art of music,
but I scarcely know where to
begin or end. There is nothing on
earth which has not its tone.
Even the air invisible sings when
smitten with a staff. Among the
beasts and the birds song is still
more marvelous. David, himself a
musician, testified with amaze-
ment and joy to the song of the
birds. What then shall I say of the br ^ ,,,. g , bs
voice of man, to which naught C
else may be compared? The 4 <
heathen philosophers have striven L ncmpci
in vain to explain how the tongue 4 ^ ,
of man can express the thoughts ' ,_
of the heart in speech and song, <<*> gcgc'
through laughter and lamenta- 4^ <t> "
tion. Music is to be praised as
second only to the Word of God
because by her are all the emotions swayed. Nothing on earth is more
mighty to make the sad gay and the gay sad, to hearten the downcast,
mellow the overweening, temper the exuberant, or mollify the vengeful.
The Holy Spirit himself pays tribute to music when he records that the
evil spirit of Saul was exorcised as David played upon his harp. The fa-
thers desired that music should always abide in the Church. That is why
there are so many songs and psalms. This precious gift has been bestowed
on men alone to remind them that they are created to praise and magnify
the Lord. But when natural music is sharpened and polished by art, then
one begins to see with amazement the great and perfect wisdom of God in
his wonderful work of music, where one voice takes a simple part and
around it sing three, four, or five other voices, leaping, springing round
about, marvelously gracing the simple part, like a square dance in heaven
with friendly bows, embracings, and hearty swinging of the partners.
He who does not find this an inexpressible miracle of the Lord is truly a
clod and is not worthy to be considered a man.

Not the least merit of music, according to Luther, is that it is not
contentious. He was never controversial in song. The great polyphonic

343

HERE I STAND

chorals of the Netherlands were Catholic, but Luther did not for that
reason cease to love and draw from them. Again, when the dukes of
Bavaria became so much his violent enemies that to receive a letter from
him might endanger one in their territories, he ventured nevertheless
to write to the Bavarian composer Scnfl: "My love for music leads me
also to hope that my letter will not endanger you in any way, for who
even in Turkey would reproach one who loves the art and lauds the
artist? At any rate I laud your Bavarian dukes even though they dislike
me, and I honor them above all others because they cultivate and honor
music." Erasmus sought to preserve the European unities in. politics;
Luther conserved them in music.

The polyphonic choral called for a choir. Luther was very assiduous
in his efforts on bfchalf of trained choirs. George Rhaw, the cantor of
Duke George and conductor of the twelve-part singing at the Leipzig
debate, was brought to Wittenberg to serve alike as the cantor of the
court choir and to the church. The choirs supported by the German
princes are worthy of note because they provided ready to hand bodies
of trained singers. Luther was greatly distressed when John Frederick
economized by discontinuing the choir long maintained through the
bounty of Frederick the Wise. By way of compensation choral so-
cieties were formed in the cities, and above all the children were trained
thoroughly in the schools.

The last and greatest reform of all was in congregational song. In
the Middle Ages the liturgy was almost entirely restricted to the cele-
brant and the choir. The congregation joined in a few responses in
the vernacular. Luther so developed this element that he may be con-
sidered the father of congregational song. This was the point at which
his doctrine of the priesthood of all believers received its most concrete
realization. This was the point and the only point at which Lutheran-
ism was thoroughly democratic. All the people sang* Portions of the
liturgy were converted into hymns: the Creed and the Sanctw. The
congregation sang not, "I believe," but, "We believe in one God-" The
congregation sang how the prophet Isaiah saw the Lord high and
lifted up and heard the seraphim intone, Holy, Holy, Holy,

344

THE CHURCH TUTORIAL

HYMNBOOK

In addition in 1524 Luther brought out a hymnbook with twenty-
three hymns of which he was the author and perhaps in part the com-
poser. Twelve were free paraphrases from Latin hymnody. Six were

CLVINTAVOX. BASSVS.

PRIMA PARS,

Vine Luchere, Vme Melanthon,
Viuicenoftrac Lumina tcrrx,
Characp Chrifto Pecfiora^cr vos
Inclyra nobis Dogmata Chn'fti
Reddfca,vcfl:ro Muncrc 5 pulfis
Nubibusatris, Prodrjcortu
Candidiorc Dogma falutfs,
Viuicclongos Ncftoris annos.

Amen*

versifications of the Psalms. His own experiences of anguish and de-
liverance enabled him in such free renderings to invest the Psalms
with a very personal feeling. "Out of the depths" became "In direst
need." That great battle hymn of the Reformation, "A Mighty For-
tress," appeared only in a later hymnbook. Here if anywhere we have
both Luther's words and music, and here more than elsewhere we
have the epitome of Luther's religious character. The hymn is based
on the Vulgate version of the Forty-sixth Psalm, for Luther in his per-
sonal devotions continued to use the Latin on which he had been
reared. Whereas in this psalm the Hebrew reads "God is our refuge,"
The Latin has "Our God is a refuge." Similarly Luther begins, "A

345

HERE I STAND

mighty fortress is our God." Though the Forty-sixth Psalm is basic,
it is handled with exceeding freedom and interwoven with many
reminiscences of the Pauline epistles and the Apocalypse. Richly
quarried, rugged words set to majestic tones marshal the embattled
hosts .of heaven. The hymn to the end strains under the overtones
of cosmic conflict as the Lord God of Sabaoth smites the prince of
darkness grim and vindicates the martyred saints.

Luther's people learned to sing. Practices were set during the week
for the entire congregation, and in the home after the catechetical hour
singing was commended to the family. A Jesuit testified that "the
hymns of Luther killed more souls than his sermons." How the songs
were carried to the people is disclosed in this excerpt from a chronicle
of the city of Magdeburg:

On the day of St. John between Easter and Pentecost, an old man, a
weaver, came through the city gate to the monument of Kaiser Otto
and there offered hymns for sale while he sang them to the people. The
burgomaster, coming from early mass and seeing the crowd, asked one of
his servants what was going on. "There is an old scamp over there," he
answered, "who is singing and selling the hymns of the heretic Luther."
The burgomaster had him arrested and thrown into prison; but two hun-
dred citizens interceded and he was released.

Among the hymns which he was singing through the streets of
Magdeburg was Luther's Aus tiefer Not:

I cry to thee in direst need.

O God, I beg thee hear me.
To my distress I pray give heed,

O Father, draw thou near me.
If thou shouldst wish to look upon
The wrong and wickedness I've done,

How could I stand before thee?

With thee is naught but untold grace

Evermore forgiving.
We cannot stand before thy face,

346

OHETJRCHC

by the best: of living.
TsTo man boasting may dra^v near.
All the living stand in. fear.

Thy grace alone can. save them.

Therefore in God. I place my trust,

IVty o^wn claim denying.
Believe in him alone I miast,

On. his sole grace relying.
He pledged to me his plighted
JMy comfort is in what I heard.

There "will I hold forever.

347

CHAPTER TWENTY

THE CHURCH MINISTERIAL

ISTINGUISHED alike in the translation of the
Bible, the composition of the catechism, the re-
form of the liturgy, and the creation of the
hymnbook, Luther was equally great in the ser-
mons preached from the pulpit, the lectures
delivered in the class hall, and the prayers
voiced in the upper room. His versatility is
genuinely amazing. No one in his own' genera-
tion was able to vie with him.

PREACHING

The Reformation gave centrality to the sermon. The pulpit was
higher than the altar, for Luther held that salvation is through the
Word and without the Word the elements are devoid of sacramental
quality, but the Word is sterile unless it is spoken. All of this is not to
say that the Reformation invented preaching, In the century preced-
ing Luther, for the single province of Westphalia ten thousand sermons
are in print, and though they are extant only in Latin they were de-
livered in German, But the Reformation did exalt the sermon. All the
educational devices described in the preceding chapter found their
highest utilization in the pulpit. The reformers at Wittenberg under-
took an extensive campaign of religious instruction through the ser-
mon. There were three public services on Sunday: from five to six in
the morning on the Pauline epistles, from nine to ten on the Gospels,
and in the afternoon at a variable hour on a continuation of the theme
of the morning or on the catechism. The church was not locked during

348

THE CHURCH MINISTERIAL

the week, but on Mondays and Tuesdays there were sermons on the
catechism, Wednesdays on the Gospel of Matthew, Thursdays and
Fridays on the apostolic letters, and Saturday evening on John's Gos-
pel. No one man carried this entire load. There was a staff of the clergy,
but Luther's share was prodigious. Including family devotions he
spoke often four times on Sundays and quarterly undertook a two-
week series four days a week on the catechism. The sum of his extant
sermons is 2,300. The highest count is for the year 1528, for which
there are 195 sermons distributed over 145 days.

His pre-eminence in the pulpit derives in part from the earnestness
with which he regarded the preaching office. The task of the minister
is to expound the Word, in which alone are to be found healing for
life's hurts and the balm of eternal blessedness. The preacher must die
daily through concern lest he lead his flock astray. Sometimes from the
pulpit Luther confessed that gladly like the priest and the Levite
would he pass by on the other side. But Luther was constantly repeat-
ing to himself the advice which he gave to a discouraged preacher
who complained that preaching was a burden, his sermons were al-
ways short, and he might better have stayed in his former profession.
Luther said to him:

Contrast of the Evangelical service, where devout hearers listen with reverent
attention and signs of contrition. The girl on the left is reading the Scriptures,

And the Catholic service, where the people lightheartedly tell their beads.
The man behind the pillar is pointing in both directions.

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HERE I STAND

If Peter and Paul were here, they would scold you because you wish
right off to be as accomplished as they. Crawling is something, even if
one is unable to walk. Do your best. If you cannot preach an hour, then
preach half an hour or a quarter of an hour. Do not try to imitate other
people. Center on the shortest and simplest points, which are the very
heart of the matter, and leave the rest to God. Look solely to his honor
and not to applause. Pray that God will give you a mouth and to your
audience ears. I can tell you preaching is not a work of man. Although
I am old [he was forty-eight] and experienced, I am afraid every time I
have to preach. You will most certainly find out three things: first, you
will have prepared your sermon as diligently as you know how, and it
will slip through your fingers like water; secondly, you may abandon
your outline and God will give you grace. You will preach your very
best. The audience will be pleased, but you won't. And thirdly, when
you have been unable in advance to pull anything together, you will
preach acceptably both to your hearers and to yourself. So pray to God
and leave all the rest to him.

Luther's sermons followed the course prescribed by the Christian
year and the lessons assigned by long usage to each Sunday. In this
area he did not innovate. Because he commonly spoke at the nine
o'clock service, his sermons are mostly on the Gospels rather than upon
his favorite Pauline epistles. But the text never mattered much to him.
If he did not have before him the Pauline words, "The just shall live
by faith," he could readily extract the same point from the example of
the paralytic in the Gospels, whose sins were forgiven before his disease
was cured. Year after year Luther preached on the same passages and
on the same great events: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter,
Pentecost. If one now reads through his sermons of thirty years on a
single theme, one is amazed at the freshness with which each year he
illumined some new aspect. When one has the feeling that there is
nothing startling this time, then comes a flash. He is narrating the be-
trayal of Jesus. Judas returns the thirty pieces of silver with the words,
"I have betrayed innocent blood," and the priest answers, "What is
that to us?" Luther comments that there is no loneliness like the loneli-
ness of a traitor since even his confederates give him no sympathy. The
sermons cover every theme from the sublimity of God to the greed of

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a sow. The conclusions were often abrupt because the sermon was
followed by the announcements, themselves frequently as long as the
sermon because all the events of the coming week were explained with
appropriate or inappropriate exhortations and castigations. A few
samples from the sermons and announcements will have to suffice.

The first example shows how he would pass directly from the ser-
mon to the announcements. The financial difficulties to which he re-
fers had not been solved by the intervention of the prince, and each
member of the congregation was therefore urged to give four pennies.
Luther points out that personally he is not affected because he receives
his stipend as a university professor from the prince. The following
excerpts are of course exceedingly condensed.

The sermon on the 8th of November, 1528, was on the lord who for-
gave his servant: This lord, said Luther, is a type of the Kingdom of
God. The servant was not forgiven because he had forgiven his fellow
servant. On the contrary he received forgiveness before he had done
anything whatever about his fellow servant. From this we see that there
are two kinds of forgiveness. The first is that which we receive from
God; the second is that which we exercise by bearing no ill will to any
upon earth. But we must not overlook the two administrations, the civil
and the spiritual, because the prince cannot and should not forgive. He
has a different administration than Christ, who rules over crashed and
broken hearts. The Kaiser rules over scoundrels who do not recognize
their sins and mock and carry their heads high. That is why the emperor
carries a sword, a sign of blood and not of peace. But Christ's kingdom
is for the troubled conscience. He says, "I do not ask of you a penny,
only this, that you do the same for your neighbor." And the lord in the
parable does not tell the servant to found a monastery, but simply that
he should have mercy on his fellow servants.

But now what shall I say to you Wittenbergers? It would be better
that I preach to you the Sacks ens fie gel [the imperial law], because you
want to be Christians while still practicing usury, robbing and stealing.
How do people who are so sunk in sins expect to receive forgiveness?
The sword of the emperor really applies here, but my sermon is for
crushed hearts who feel their sins and have no peace. Enough for this
gospel

I understand that this is the week for the church collection, and many

HERE I STAND

of you do not want to give a thing. You ungrateful people should be
ashamed of yourselves. You Wittenbergers have been relieved of schools
and hospitals, which have been taken over by the common chest, and
now you want to know why you are asked to give four pennies. They are
for the ministers, schoolteachers, and sacristans. The first labor for your
salvation, preach to you the precious treasure of the gospel, administer
the sacraments, and visit you at great personal risk in the plague. The
second train children to be good magistrates, judges, and ministers. The
third care for the poor. So far the common chest has cared for these, and
now that you are asked to give four miserable pennies you are up in arms.
What does this mean if not that you do not want the gospel preached,
the children taught, and the poor helped? I am not saying this for myself.
I receive nothing from you. I am the prince's beggar. But I am sorry
I ever freed you from the tyrants and the papists. You ungrateful beasts,
you are not worthy of the treasure of the gospel. If you don't improve, I
will stop preaching rather than cast pearls before swine.

And now another point: couples to be blessed by the curate before a
wedding should come early. There are seated hours: in summer, mornings
at eight and afternoons at three; in winter, mornings at nine and after-
noons at two. If you come later, I will bless you myself, and you won't
thank me for it. And the invited guests should prepare themselves in good
time for the wedding and let not Miss Goose wait for Mrs. Duck.

On January 10th, 1529, the lesson was the wedding at Cana of Galilee.
This passage, said Luther, is written in honor of marriage. There are three
estates: marriage, virginity, and widowhood. They are all good. None is
to be despised. The virgin is not to be esteemed above the widow, nor
the widow above the wife, any more than the tailor is to be esteemed
above the butcher. There is no estate to which the Devil is so opposed as
to marriage. The clergy have not wanted to be bothered with work and
worry. They have been afraid of a nagging wife, disobedient children,
difficult relatives, or the dying of a pig or a cow. They want to lie abed
until the sun shines through the window. Our ancestors knew this and
would say, "Dear child, be a priest or a nun and have a good time/' I
have heard married people say to monks, "You have it easy, but when
we get up we do not know where to find our bread-" Marriage is a
heavy cross because so many couples quarrel. It is the grace of God when
they agree. The Holy Spirit declares there are three wonders: when
brothers agree, when neighbors love each other, and when a man and a
wife are at one. When I see a pair like that, I am as glad as if I were in
a garden of roses. It is rare*

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SERMON ON THE NATIVITY

Luther is at his best and most characteristic in his sermons on the
Nativity. The entire recital appears utterly artless, but by way of
preparation he had steeped himself in the interpretations of the story
by Augustine, Bernard, Tauler, and Ludwig of Saxony, the author of
a life of Christ. All that thus had preceded was infused by Luther
with the profundities of his theology and vitalized by his graphic imagi-
nation. Here is an example:

How unobtrusively and simply do those events take place on earth that
are so heralded in heaven! On earth it happened in this wise: There was
a poor young wife, Mary of Nazareth, among the meanest dwellers of
the town, so little esteemed that none noticed the great wonder that she
carried. She was silent, did not vaunt herself, but served her husband, who
had no man or maid. They simply left the house. Perhaps they had a
donkey for Mary to ride upon, though the Gospels say nothing about
it, and we may well believe that she went on foot. The journey was
certainly more than a day from Nazareth in Galilee to Bethlehem, which
lies on the farther side of Jerusalem. Joseph had thought, "When we get
to Bethlehem, we shall be among relatives and can borrow everything,"

"THE NATIVITY" FROM LUTHER'S BIBLE OF 1534

On the left is Luther's seal. He desired that the cross be black -for mortifica-
tion, the rose 'white for the joy of faith^ the field blue for the joy of heaven,
and the ring gold for eternal blessedness.

353

HERE I STAND

A fine idea that was! Bad enough that a young bride married only a year
could not have had her baby at Nazareth in her own house instead of
making all that journey of three days when heavy with child! How much
worse that when she arrived there was no room for her! The inn was full.
No one would release a room to this pregnant woman. She had to go to a
cow stall and there bring forth the Maker of all creatures because nobody
would give way. Shame on you, wretched Bethlehem! The inn ought to
have been burned with brimstone, for even though Mary had been a
beggar maid or unwed, anybody at such a time should have been glad to
give her a hand. There are many of you in this congregation who think
to yourselves: "If only I had been there! How quick I would have been
to help the Baby! I would have washed his linen. How happy I would
have been to go with the shepherds to see the Lord lying in the manger!"
Yes, you would! You say that because you know how great Christ is, but
if you had been there at that time you would have done no better than
the people of Bethlehem. Childish and silly thoughts are these! Why
don't you do it now? You have Christ in your neighbor. You ought to
serve him, for what you do to your neighbor in need you do to the Lord
Christ himself. The birth was still more pitiable. No one regarded this
young wife bringing forth her first-born. No one took her condition to
heart. No one noticed that in a strange place she had not the very least
thing needful in childbirth. There she was without preparation: no light,
no fire, in the dead of night, in thick darkness* No one came to give the
customary assistance. The guests swarming in the inn were carousing,
and no one attended to this woman. I think myself if Joseph and Mary
had realized that her time was so close she might perhaps have been left
in Nazareth. And now think what she could use for swaddling clothes-
some garment she could spare, perhaps her veil certainly not Joseph's
breeches, which are now on exhibition at Aachen*

Think, women, there was no one there to bathe the Baby, No warm
water, nor even cold. No fire, no light. The mother was herself midwife
and the maid. The cold manger was the bed and the bathtub. Who
showed the poor girl what to do? She had never had a baby before. I am
amazed that the little one did not freeze. Do not make of Mary a stone.
For the higher people are in the favor of God, the more tender are they.

Let us, then, meditate upon the Nativity just as we see it happening
in our own babies. Behold Christ lying in the lap of his young mother.
What can be sweeter than the Babe, what more lovely than the mother!
What fairer than her youth! What more gracious than her virginity! Look
at the Child, knowing nothing* Yet all that is belongs to him, that your

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conscience should not fear but take comfort in him. Doubt nothing. To
me there is no greater consolation given to mankind than this, that Christ
became man, a child, a babe, playing in the lap and at the breasts of his
most gracious mother. Who is there whom this sight would not comfort?
Now is overcome the power of sin, death, hell, conscience, and guilt, if
you come to this gurgling Babe and believe that he is come, not to judge
you, but to save.

EXPOSITION OF JONAH

As Luther's sermons were often didactic, so were his lectures com-
monly sermonic. He was always teaching, whether in the classroom
or the pulpit; and he was always preaching, whether in the pulpit or
the classroom. His lectures on Jonah are even more of a sermon than
many preached in the Castle Church. Luther handled Jonah as he did
every other biblical character as a mirror of his own experience. Here
is a digest of the exposition.

Jonah was sent to rebuke the mighty king of Assyria. That took
courage. If we had been there, we should have thought it silly that one
single man should attack such an empire. How silly it would seem for
one of us to go on such a mission to the Turks. And how ridiculous often
it has appeared that a single man should rebuke the pope. But God's work
always appears as folly.

"And Jonah took ship for Tarshish." The godless think they can get
away from God by going to a town where he is not recognized. Why
did Jonah refuse? First because the assignment was very great. No prophet
had ever been chosen to go to the heathen. Another reason was that he
felt the enmity of Nineveh. He thought God was only the God of the
Jews, and he would rather be dead than proclaim the grace of God to the
heathen.

Then God sent a great wind. Why should he have involved the other
passengers in Jonah's punishment? We are not the ones to lay down rules
for God, and for that matter the other persons on the boat were not
innocent. We have all transgressed. The storm must have been very
sudden because the people felt that it must have an unusual cause. Natural
reason taught the sailors that God is God. The light of reason is a great
light, but it fails in that it is ready to believe that God is God, but not
to believe that God is God to you. These people called on God. This
proves that they believed he was God, that is to others, but they did not

355

HERE I STAND

really believe he would help them, otherwise they would not have thrown
Jonah overboard. They did their uttermost to save the ship like the
papists who try to be saved by works.

Jonah was asleep in the hold. Men are like that when they have sinned.
They feel no compunction. If God had forgotten his sin, Jonah would
never have given it another thought. But when he was awakened and saw
the state of the ship he recognized his guilt. His conscience became active*
Then he felt the sting of death and the anger of God. Not only the ship
but the whole world was too small for him* He admitted his fault and
cleared all the others. This is what contrition does. It makes all the world
innocent and yourself only a sinner. But Jonah was not yet ready to make
a public acknowledgment. He let the sailors wrestle until God made it
plain that they would all perish with him. No one would confess. They
had to cast lots. Wounds cannot be healed until they are revealed, and
sins cannot be forgiven until they are confessed. Some say that they
sinned in casting lots, but I cannot see that lot-casting is forbidden in
Scripture.

Then Jonah said, "I am a Hebrew. I fear the God who made heaven
and earth." The weight of sin and conscience is made greater if confessed.
Then faith begins to burn, albeit weakly. When God's wrath overtakes
us there are always two things, sin and anxiety. Some allow the sin to stand
and center on the anxiety. That won't do. Reason does this when faith and
grace are not present.

Jonah confessed his sin to be all the greater when he said, "I am a
Hebrew and a worshiper of the true God." This made him all the more
inexcusable. And Jonah said, "Throw me into the sea." The sailors thought
confession was enough, and they set to work again on the oars. Jonah
had to plumb the shame which was a thousand times greater because it
was against God. For such a one there is no corner into which he may
creep, no, not even in hell. He did not foresee his deliverance. God takes
all honor and all comfort away and leaves only shame and desolation.

Then came death, for the sting of death is sin. Jonah pronounced his
own sentence, "Throw me into the sea." We must always remember that
Jonah could not see to the end. He saw only death, death* death* The
worst of it was that this death was due to God's anger. It would not be so
bad to die as a martyr, but when death is a punishment it is truly horrible.
Who does not tremble before death, even though he does not feel the
wrath of God? But if there be also sin and conscience, who can endure
shame before God and the world? What a stfuggle must have taken place
in Jonah's heart* He must have sweat blood. He had to fight against sin,

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THE CHURCH MINISTERIAL

against his own conscience, the feeling of his heart, against death, and
against God's anger all at once.

As if the sea were not enough, God prepared a great fish. As the
monster opened its frightful jaws, the teeth were jagged like mountain
peaks. The waves rushed in and swept Jonah into the belly. What a
picture is this of Anfechtung. Just so the conscience wilts before the
wrath of God, death, hell, and damnation. "And Jonah was three days and
three nights in the belly of the whale." Those were the longest three
days and three nights that ever happened under the sun. His lungs and
liver pounded. He would hardly have looked around to see his habitation.
He was thinking, "When, when, when will this end?"

How could anyone imagine that a man could be three days and three
nights in the belly of a fish without light, without food, absolutely alone,
and come out alive? Who would not take this for a fairy tale if it were
not in Scripture?

But God is even in hell.

"And Jonah prayed unto the Lord from the belly of the whale." I do
not believe he could compose such a fine psalm while he was down there,
but this shows what he was thinking. He was not expecting his salvation.
He thought he must die, yet he prayed, "I cried by reason of mine afflic-
tion unto the Lord." This shows that we must always pray to God. If you
can just cry, your agony is over. Hell is not hell any more if you can
cry to God. But no one can believe how hard this is. We can understand
wailing, trembling, sighing, doubting, but to cry out, this is what we
cannot do. Conscience, sin, and the wrath of God are about our necks.
Nature cannot cry out. When Jonah reached the point that he could cry,
he had won. Cry unto the Lord in your anguish, and it will be milder. Just
cry and nothing else. He does not ask about your merit. Reason does not
understand this, and always wants to bring in something to placate God.
But there just is nothing to bring. Reason does not believe that all that
is needed to quiet God's anger is a cry.

"All thy waves and thy billows are gone over me." Observe that Jonah
calls them thy waves. If a wind-blown leaf can affright a host, what must
not the sea have done to Jonah? And what will not the majesty of God
at the judgment day do to all angels and all creatures? "My soul melted
within me, and I thought of the Lord." This is to turn from the God of
judgment to God the Father. But this does not lie in the power of man.
"I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving, I will pay that
I had vowed." "And the Lord spake unto the fish, and it cast Jonah forth
upon the dry land." The instrument of death is become the agency of life.

357

HERE I STAND
PRAYER

Luther was above all else a man of prayer, and yet of his prayers we
have less than of his sermons and conversations because he succeeded in
keeping his students out of the secret chamber. There are the collects
which he composed for the liturgy, the prayer for the sacristy, and
a prayer reputed to have been overheard by his roommate at Worms.
We are on safer ground in the following excerpts from his exposition
of the Lord's Prayer:

Luther instructs his readers to say: O Heavenly Father, dear God, I
am not worthy that I should lift up mine eyes or my hands to thee in
prayer, but since thou hast commanded us to pray and hast taught us how
through Jesus Christ our Lord, I will say, "Give us this day our daily
bread." O dear Lord Father, give us thy blessing in this earthly life. Give
us graciously thy peace and spare us from war. Grant to our Kaiser wis-
dom and understanding that he may govern his earthly kindom in peace
and blessedness. Give to all kings, princes, and lords good counsel that
they may direct their lands in quietness and justice, and especially guard
the ruler of our dear land. Protect him from malignant tongues, and instill
into all subjects grace to serve in fidelity and obedience. Bestow on us
good weather and the fruits of the earth. We commend unto thee house,
grounds, wife, and child. Help that we may govern, nourish, and rear.
Ward off the Corrupter and the evil angels who impede these things.
Amen*

"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against
us." Dear Lord and Father, enter not into judgment with us, since before
thee is no man living justified. Reckon not unro us our transgressions and
that we are so ungrateful of all thy unspeakable mercies of the spirit and
of the body, and that we daily fail more than we know or are aware* Mark
not how good or evil we be, but vouchsafe to us thy unmerited mercy
through Jesus Christ, thy dear Son. Forgive also all our enemies and all
who have hurt and done us wrong as \ve also forgive them from our
hearts, for they do themselves the greatest wrong in that they kindle thee
against them. But we are not helped by their loss and would much rather
that they be blessed. Amen. (And if anyone here feels that he cannot
forgive, let him pray for grace that he may. But that is a point which be-
longs to preaching.)

358

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

THE STRUGGLE FOR FAITH

LWAYS more intimately personal than his
teaching and preaching was Luther's pastoral
counseling. Neither in the classroom nor in
the pulpit was the personal ever wholly absent.
But when the physician was engaged in the
cure of souls, he drew almost exclusively on
that which he had himself discovered to be
good for like ailments. For that reason any
consideration of what he did for others by way of allaying spiritual
distress must take the form of the further analysis of his own maladies
and of the remedies which he found to be of avail alike for himself
and for others.

LUTHER'S PERSISTENT STRUGGLE

At the outset the recognition is inescapable that he had persistent
maladies. This man who so undergirded others with faith had for
himself a perpetual battle for faith. Perhaps the severest upheaval of
his whole life came in the year 1527. The recurrence of these de-
pressions raises for us again the question whether they may have had
some physical basis, and the question really cannot be answered. The
attempt to discover a correlation between his many diseases and the
despondencies has proved unsuccessful, and one must not forget in
this connection that his spiritual ailments were acute in the monastery
before the physical had begun. To discover a connection with out-
ward events is more plausible. Crises were precipated by a thunder-
storm, by the saying of the first mass, and in 1527 by the total impact

359

HERE I STAND

of the radicals, coupled with the fact that Luther was still sleeping in
his own bed while his followers were dying for the faith. As he came
out from under the state of shock which overtook him, he was wres-
tling with the self-reproach of being still alive. "I was not worthy,'*
he was saying, "to shed my blood for Christ as many of my fellow
confessors of the gospel have done. Yet this honor was denied to the
beloved disciple, John the Evangelist, who wrote a much worse book

MARTYRDOM OK HEINRICH OK ZUKTPHKN
360

THE STRUGGLE FOR FAITH

against the papacy than ever I did." Although outward events af-
fected him, the very nature of the dark night of the soul is that it
may be occasioned by nothing tangible whatever. Physical debilita-
tion was more often the effect than the cause.

The content of the depressions was always the same, the loss of
faith that God is good and that he is good to me. After the frightful
Anfechtung of 1527 Luther wrote, "For more than a week I was
close to the gates of death and hell. I trembled in all my members.
Christ was wholly lost. I was shaken by desperation and blasphemy
of God." His agony in the later years was all the more intense be-
cause he was a physician of souls; and if the medicine which he had
prescribed for himself and for them was actually poison, how fright-
ful was his responsibility. The great problem for him was not to
know where his depressions came from, but to know how to over-
come them. In the course of repeated utterances on the subject he
worked out a technique for himself and for his parishioners.

The first comfort which he offered was the reflection that intense
upheavals of the spirit are necessary for valid solutions of genuine
religious problems. The emotional reactions may be unduly acute,
for the Devil always turns a louse into a camel. Nevertheless the
way of man with God cannot be tranquil.

If I live longer, I would like to write a book about Anfechtungen,
for without them no man can understand Scripture, faith, the fear or the
love of God. He does not know the meaning of hope who was never
subject to temptations.

David must have been plagued by a very fearful devil. He could not
have had such profound insights if he had not experienced great assaults.

Luther verged on saying that an excessive emotional sensitivity is a
mode of revelation. Those who are predisposed to fall into despond-
ency as well as to rise into ecstasy may be able to view reality from an
angle different from that of ordinary folk. Yet it is a true angle; and
when the problem or the religious object has been once so viewed,
others less sensitive will be able to look from a new vantage point and
testify that the insight is valid.

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HERE I STAND

HIS DEPRESSIONS

Luther felt that his depressions were necessary. At the same time
they were dreadful and by all means and in every way to be avoided
and overcome. His whole life was a struggle against them, a fight for
faith. This is the point at which he interests us so acutely, for we too
are cast down and we too would know how to assuage our despond-
ency. Luther had two methods: the one was a head-on attack, the
other an approach by way of indirection. Sometimes he would engage
in direct encounter with the Devil. This particular wise en scene may
amuse the modern reader and incline him not to take Luther seriously;
but it is noteworthy that what the Devil says to Luther is only what
one says to oneself in moments of introspection, and, what is still
more significant, only the minor difficulties were referred to the Devil.
In all the major encounters, God himself was the assailant. The Devil
was something of a relief. Luther relished, by comparison, the personi-
fication of his enemy in the form of a being whom he could bait with-
out danger of blasphemy* He describes with gusto some of these
bouts:

When I go to bed, the Devil is always waiting for me* When he begins
to plague me, I give him this answer: "Devil, I must sleep. That's God's
command, 'Work by day. Sleep by night.' So go away," If that doesn't
work and he brings out a catalog of sins, I say, "Yes, old fellow, I know
all about it. And I know some more you have overlooked. Here are a
few extra. Put them down." If he still won't quit and presses me hard
and accuses me as a sinner, I scorn him and say, "St. Satan, pray for me.
Of course you have never done anything wrong in your life* You alone
are holy. Go to God and get grace for yourself. If you want to get me
all straightened out, I say, 'Physician, heal thyself/ "

Sometimes Luther had the temerity to undertake also the greater en-
counter with God himself. "I dispute much with God with great im-
patience," said he, "and I hold him to his promises." The Canaanite
woman was a source of unending wonder and comfort to Luther be-
cause she had the audacity to argue with Christ. When she asked him
to come and cure her daughter, he answered that he was not sent but

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THE STRUGGLE FOR FAITH

to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and that it was not meet to
take the children's bread and give it to the dogs. She did not dispute his
judgment. She agreed that she was a dog. She asked no more than that
which befits a dog, to lick up the crumbs which fall from the chil-
dren's table. She took Christ at his own words. He then treated her not
as a dog but as a child of Israel.

All this is written for our comfort that we should see how deeply God
hides his face and how we must not go by our feeling but only by his
Word. All Christ's answers sounded like no, but he did not mean no. He
had not said that she was not of the house of Israel. He had not said that
she was a dog. He had not said no. Yet all his answers were more like no
than yes. This shows how our heart feels in despondency. It sees nothing
but a plain no. Therefore it must turn to the deep hidden yes under the
no and hold with a firm faith to God's word.

THE WAY OF INDIRECTION

At times, however, Luther advised against any attempt to wrestle
one's way through. "Don't argue with the Devil," he said. "He has had
five thousand years of experience. He has tried out all his tricks on
Adam, Abraham, and David, and he knows exactly the weak spots."
And he is persistent. If he does not get you down with the first assault,
he will commence a siege of attrition until you give in from sheer ex-
haustion. Better banish the whole subject. Seek company and discuss
some irrelevant matter as, for example, what is going on in Venice.
Shun solitude. "Eve got into trouble when she walked in the garden
alone. I have my worst temptations when I am by myself." Seek out
some Christian brother, some wise counselor. Undergird yourself with
the fellowship of the church. Then, too, seek convivial company,
feminine company, dine, dance, joke, and sing. Make yourself eat and
drink even though food may be very distasteful. Fasting is the very
worst expedient. Once Luther gave three rules for dispelling despond-
ency: the first is faith in Christ; the second is to get downright angry;
the third is the love of a woman. Music was especially commended.
The Devil hates it because he cannot endure gaiety. Luther's physician
relates that on one occasion he came with some friends for a musical
soiree only to find Luther in a swoon; but when the others struck up

363

HERE I STAND

the song, he was soon one of the party. Home life was a comfort and
a diversion. So also was the presence of his wife when the Devil as-
saulted him in the night watches. "Then I turn to my Katie and say,
'Forbid me to have such temptations, and recall me from such vain
vexations/ " Manual labor was a relief. A good way, counseled Luther,

to exorcise the Devil is
to harness the horse and
spread manure on the
fields. In all this advice
to flee the fray Luther
was in a way prescribing
faith as a cure for the
lack of faith. To give up
the argument is of itself
an act of faith akin to the
Gelasrsenheit of the mys-
tics, an expression of
confidence in the restor-
ative power of God, who
man occupies himself with

DEVXL AND DEATH HARASS A SOUL

while

operates in the subconscious
extraneous things*

This explains why Luther liked to watch those who take life blithe-
ly, such as birds and babies. When he saw his little Martin nursing, he
remarked, "Child, your enemies are the pope, the bishops, Duke
George, Ferdinand, and the Devil And there you are sucking uncon-
cernedly,"

When Anastasia, then four years old, was prattling of Christ, angels,
and heaven, Luther said, "My dear child, if only we could hold fast
to this f aith."

"Why, papa/' said she, "don't you beEeve it? 11

Luther commented:

Christ has made the children our teachers* I am chagrined that although!
I am ever so much a doctor, I still have to go to the same school with 1

364

THE STRUGGLE FOR FAITH

Hans and Magdalena, for who among men can understand the full mean-
ing of this word of God, "Our Father who art in heaven"? Anyone who
genuinely believes these words will often say, "I am the Lord of heaven
and earth and all that is therein. The Angel Gabriel is my servant, Raphael
is my guardian, and the angels in my every need are ministering spirits.
My Father, who is in heaven, will give them charge over me lest I dash
my foot against a stone." And while I am affirming this faith, my Father
suffers me to be thrown into prison, drowned, or beheaded. Then faith
falters and in weakness I cry, "Who knows whether it is true?"

WRESTLING WITH THE ANGEL

Merely watching children could not answer that question. The
encounter had to be resumed on the direct level. If Luther was dis-
turbed about the state of the world and the state of the Church, he
could gain reassurance only through the recognition that as a matter
of plain fact the situation was not bad. Despite the many pessimistic
judgments of his later years Luther could say, "I entertain no sorry pic-
ture of our Church, but rather that of the Church flourishing through
pure and uncorrupted teaching and one increasing with excellent
ministers from day to day."

At other times the depression was with regard to himself. One re-
calls his oscillation of feeling at the Wartburg as to whether he had
been brash or craven. The answer in his own case could never be
that he had any claim on God, and then the question forever recurred
whether God would then be gracious. When one is assailed by this
doubt, where shall one turn? Luther would say that one never knows
where, but always somewhere. To inquire after the starting point of
Luther's theology is futile. It begins where it can. Christ himself ap-
pears variable, sometimes as a good Shepherd and sometimes as the
avenging Judge. If then Christ appeared hostile, Luther would turn
to God and would recall the first commandment, "I am the Lord thy
God." This very pronouncement is at the same time a promise, and
God must be held to his promises.

In such a case we must say, "Let go everything in which I have trusted.
Lord, thou alone givest help and comfort. Thou hast said that thou
wouldst help me. I believe thy word. O my God and Lord, I have heard

365

THE STRUGGLE FOR FAITH

from thee a joyful and comforting word. I hold to it. I kn Ow thou
not lie to me. No matter how thou mayest appear, thou wilt keep
thou hast promised, that and nothing else."

On the other hand, if God hides himself in the storm clouds which
brood over the brow of Sinai, then gather about the mange r look u
the infant Jesus as he leaps in the lap of his mother, and know
the hope of the world is here. Or again, if Christ and Q 0( j ^ifa
unapproachable, then look upon the firmament of the heavens and
marvel at the work of God, who sustains them without pill ars Qr take
the meanest flower and see in the smallest petal the handiwork of
God.

All the external aids of religion are to be prized. Luther attache^
great importance to his baptism. When the Devil assailed him he would
answer, "I am baptized." In his conflicts with the Catholics and th e
radicals he reassured himself similarly by making appeal to his doctor-
ate. This gave him authority and the right to speak.

THE ROCK OF SCRIPTURE

But always and above all else the one great objective aid for Luther
was the Scriptures, because this is the written record of the revelation
of God in Christ. "The true Christian pilgrimage is not to Rome of
Compostela, but to the prophets, the Psalms, and the Gospels." The
Scriptures assumed for Luther an overwhelming importance not
primarily as a source book for antipapal polemic, but as the one ground
of certainty. He had rejected the authority of popes and councils an<l
could not make a beginning from within as did the prophets of the in-
ward word. The core of his quarrel with them was that in moments
of despondency he could find nothing within but utter blackness tl e
was completely lost unless he could find something without on which
to lay hold. And this he found in the Scriptures.

He approached them uncritically, from our point of view but
with credulity. Nothing so amazed him in all the biblical record as
faith of the participants: that Mary credited the annunciation of th 6
angel Gabriel; that Joseph gave credence to the dream ^hich allave<i

367

HERE I STAND

his misgivings; that the shepherds believed the opening of the heavens
and the angels' song; that the Wise Men were ready to go to Bethlehem
at the word of the prophet. There were three miracles of the Nativity:
that God became man, that a virgin conceived, and that Mary be-
lieved. And the greatest of these was the last. When the Wise Men
relied upon their judgment and went straight to Jerusalem without
consulting the star, God lifted it out of heaven and left them bewil-
dered to make inquiry of Herod, who then called his wise men and they
searched the Scriptures. And that is what we must do when we are
bereft of the star.

But this is just the point where Luther's lead begins to elude us. We
can follow him well enough in the description of his distress. It is
when he offers us this way out that we are cast down. Must we leave
him now like some Vergil in Purgatory and seek in another the Bea-
trice who may be able to conduct us to Paradise? Perhaps a word of
Luther may help us, after all, for he declared that the gospel is not
so much a miracle as a marvel, nan vnvracida $ed wnrabilia. There is no
better way to feel the wonder than to take Luther as guide. Let him
portray for us, with all his power and poignancy, the spiritual de-
spondencies of the biblical characters and the way in which they were
able to find the hand of the Lord,

We have already seen an example in the case of his treatment of
Jonah. By way of f urther illustration let us take Jhis portrayal of the
sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham. Save for the initial assumption that
God commanded the sacrifice and that the angel intervened in the end,
all else is the record of an inner struggle which is not hard to translate
into the story of an emerging insight or an unfolding revelation. Hear
Luther as he expounds the tale:

Abraham was told by God that he must sacrifice the son of his old
age by a miracle, the seed through whom he was to become the father
of kings and of a great nation. Abraham turned pale. Not only would he
lose his son, but God appeared to be a Han He had said, "In Isaac shall
be thy seed," but now he said, "Kill Isaac, 1 * Who would not hate a God
so cruel and contradictory? How Abraham longed to talk it over with
someone! Could he not tell Sarah? But he well knew that if he mentioned

368

THE STRUGGLE FOR FAITH

it to anyone he would be dissuaded and prevented from carrying out the
behest. The spot designated for the sacrifice, Mount Moriah, was some
distance away; "and Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled
his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and
clave the wood for the burnt-offering." Abraham did not leave the
saddling of the ass to others. He himself laid on the beast the wood for
the burnt offering. He was thinking all the time that these logs would
consume his son, his hope of seed. With these very sticks that he was
picking up the boy would be burned. In such a terrible case should he not
take time to think it over? Could he not tell Sarah? With what inner
tears he suffered! He girt the ass and was so absorbed he scarcely knew
what he was doing.

He took two servants and Isaac his son. In that moment everything
died in him: Sarah, his family, his home, Isaac. This is what it is to sit in
sackcloth and ashes. If he had known that this was only a trial, he would
not have been tried. Such is the nature of our trials that while they last
we cannot see to the end. "Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his
eyes, and saw the place afar off." What a battle he had endured in those
three days! There Abraham left the servants and the ass, and he laid the
wood upon Isaac and himself took the torch and the sacrificial knife. All
the time he was thinking, "Isaac, if you knew, if your mother knew that
you are to be sacrificed." "And they went both of them together." The
whole world does not know what here took place. They two walked
together. Who? The father and the dearest son die one not knowing what
was in store but ready to obey, the other certain that he must leave his
son in ashes. Then said Isaac, "My father." And he said, "Yes, my son."
And Isaac said, "Father, here is the fire and here the wood, but where is
the lamb?" He called him father and was solicitous test he had overlooked
something, and Abraham said, "God will himself provide a lamb, my
son."

When they were come to the mount, Abraham built the altar and
laid on the wood, and then he was forced to tell Isaac. The boy was
stupefied. He must have protested, "Have you forgotten: I am the son
of Sarah by a miracle in her age, that I was promised and that through me
you are to be the father of a great nation?" And Abraham must have
answered that God would fulfill his promise even out of ashes. Then
Abraham bound him and laid him upon the wood. The father raised his
knife. The boy bared his throat. If God had slept an instant, the lad
would have been dead. I could not have watched. I am not able in my
thoughts to follow. The lad was as a sheep for the slaughter. Never in

369

HERE I STAND

history was there such obedience, save only in Christ. But God was watch-
ing, and all the angels. The father raised his knife; the boy did not
wince. The angel cried, "Abraham, Abraham!" See how divine majesty
is at hand in the hour of death. We say, "In the midst of life we die."
God answers, "Nay, in the midst of death we live."

Luther once read this story for family devotions. When he had
finished, Katie said, "I do not believe it, God would not have treated
his son like that."

"But, Katie," answered Luther, "he did,"

Hear Luther also as he describes the passion of Christ. The narrative
is placed on a most human level. We are reminded that the death of
Christ was of all the most terrible because it was an execution. This
means death at a known moment for one who is fully aware of what is
involved. In old age the angel of death often muffles his wings and
permits us to slip peacefully away. Jesus went to his death in full pos-
session of his faculties. He suffered even more than did the malefactors.
A robber was simply crucified, not at the same time reviled. To Christ
were spoken words of raillery, "If you are the Son of God, come
down." As if to say, "God is just. He would not suffer an innocent man
to die upon a cross." Christ at this point was simply a man, and it was
for him as it is for me when the Devil comes and says, "You are mine."
After the reviling of Christ; the sun was darkened and the earth
trembled. If a troubled conscience shudders at the rustling of a wind-
blown leaf, how much more terrible must it have been when the sun
was blotted out and the earth was shaken, Christ was driven to a cry
of desperation. The words are recorded in the original tongue that
we may sense the stark desolation: Eli, Eli, lama sab&chthtmi? "My
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" But note this, the prayer
of the forsaken began, "My God." The cry of despair was a confession
of faith.

What wonder then that Luther, in the year of his deepest depression,
composed these lines:

A mighty bulwark is our God
A doughty ward and weapon*

370

"A MIGHTY FORTRESS" IN LUTHER'S HAND

He helps us clear from every rod
By which we now are smitten.

Still our ancient foe

Girds him to strike a blow.

Might and guile his gear.

His armor striketh fear.
On earth is not his equal.

By our own strength is nothing won.

We court at once disaster.
There fights for us the Champion

Whom God has named our Master.
Would you know his name?
Jesus Christ the same
Lord Sabaoth is he.

371

I STA3STD

NTo other God can. be.

The field is his to hold it.

And though the fiends on every hand

"Were threatening to devovir us,
"We "would not waver froni oxir stand.

They cannot overpo\ver tis.
This ^vorld's prince may rave.
However he behave,
tie can do no ill.
God's truth abideth still.

One little -word shall fell him.

That \vord they never can dismay.

However mxich they batter,
For God himself is in the fray

-A^nd nothing else can matter.
Then let them take oxir life.,
Goods, honor, children, wife.
"We will let all go,
They shall not concjuer so-,

For God \vill \vm the battle,

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

THE MEASURE OF THE MAN

HE LAST sixteen years of Luther's life, from the
Augsburg Confession in 1530 to his death in
1546, are commonly treated more cursorily
by biographers than the earlier period, if in-
deed they are not omitted altogether. There
is a measure of justification for this compara-
tive neglect because the last quarter of Luther's
life was neither determinative for his ideas
nor crucial for his achievements. His own verdict in 1531 was more
than a grim jest, namely, "Should the papists by their devouring,
biting, tearing help me to put off this sinful carcass and should the
Lord not wish this time to deliver me as he has so often done before,
then may he be praised and thanked. I have lived long enough. Not
until I am gone will they feel Luther's full weight." He was right;
his ideas were matured; his church was established; his associates
could carry on, as indeed in the public sphere they were compelled
to do because for the remainder of his life he was under the ban of
Church and state.

THE BIGAMY OF THE LANDGRAVE

This exile from the public scene chafed him the more because the
conflicts and the labors of the dramatic years had impaired his health
and made him prematurely an irascible old man, petulant, peevish,
unrestrained, and at times positively coarse. This is no doubt another
reason why biographers prefer to be brief in dealing with this period.
There are several incidents over which one would rather draw the

373

HERE I STAND

veil, but precisely because they are so often exploited to his discredit
they are not to be left unrecorded. The most notorious was his
attitude toward the bigamy of the landgrave, Philip of Hesse. This
prince had been given in marriage with no regard to his own affec-
tionsthat is, for purely political reasons at the age of nineteen
to the daughter of Duke George. Philip, unable to combine romance
with marriage, found his satisfaction promiscuously on the outside.
After his conversion his conscience so troubled him that he dared not
present himself at the Lord's Table. He believed that if he could
have one partner to whom he was genuinely attached he would be
able to keep himself within the bounds of matrimony. There were
several ways in which his difficulty could have been solved. If he
had remained a Catholic, he might have been able to secure an
annulment on the grounds of some defect in the marriage; but since
he had become a Lutheran, he could expect no consideration from
the pope. Nor would Luther permit recourse to the Catholic device.
A second solution would have been divorce and remarriage. A great
many Protestant bodies in the present day would countenance this
method, particularly since Philip had been subjected in his youth
to a loveless match. But Luther at this point interpreted the Gospels
rigidly and held to the word of Christ as reported by Matthew that
divorce is permissible only for adultery. But Luther did feel that
there should be some remedy, and he discovered it by a reversion
to the mores of the Old Testament patriarchs, who had practiced
bigamy and even polygamy without any manifestation of divine dis-
pleasure. Philip was given the assurance that he might in good con-
science take a second wife. Since, however, to do so would be against
the law of the land, he should keep the union a secret. This the new
bride's mother declined to do; and then Luther counseled a lie on the
ground that his advice had been given as in the confessional, and to
guard the secrets of the confessional a He is justified. But the secret
was out, and the disavowal was ineffective. Luther's final comment
was that if anyone thereafter should practice bigamy, let the Devil
give him a bath in the abyss of hell

374

THE MEASURE OF THE MAN

The whole episode had disastrous political consequences for the
Protestant movement because Philip, in order to secure pardon from
the emperor, had to dissociate himself from a military alliance with
the Protestants. The scene of Philip abjectly seeking grace from His
Imperial Majesty has a certain irony because Charles deposited
illegitimate children all over Europe, whom the pope legitimatized
in order that they might occupy high offices of state. Luther's solution
of the problem can be called only a pitiable subterfuge. He should
first have directed his attack against the evil system of degrading
marriage to the level of a political convenience, and he might well
have adopted the later Protestant solution of divorce.

ATTITUDE TO THE ANABAPTISTS

The second development of those later years was a hardening
toward sectaries, notably the Anabaptists. Their growth constituted
a very real problem to the territorial church, since despite the decree
of death visited upon them at the Diet of Speyer in 1529 with the
concurrence of the Evangelicals, the intrepidity and irreproachable
lives of the martyrs had enlisted converts to the point of threatening
to depopulate the established churches. Philip of Hesse observed more
improvement of life among the sectaries than among the Lutherans,
and a Lutheran minister who wrote against the Anabaptists testified
that they went in among the poor, appeared very lowly, prayed
much, read from the Gospel, talked especially about the outward
life and good works, about helping the neighbor, giving and lending,
holding goods in common, exercising authority over none, and
living with all as brothers and sisters. Such were the people executed
by Elector John in Saxony. But the blood of the martyrs proved
again to be the seed of the church.

Luther was very much distraught over the whole matter. In 1527
he wrote with regard to the Anabaptists:

It is not right, and I am deeply troubled that the poor people are so
pitifully put to death, burned, and cruelly slain. Let everyone believe
what he likes. If he is wrong, he will have punishment enough in hell

375

HERE I STAND

fire. Unless there is sedition, one should oppose them with Scripture and
God's Word, With fire you won't get anywhere.

This obviously did not mean, however, that Luther considered one
faith as good as another. Most emphatically he believed that the
wrong faith would entail hell-fire; and although the true faith cannot

THE ANABAPTIST PKKACHER

be created by coercion, it can be relieved of impediments. The
magistrate certainly should not suffer the faith to be blasphemed*
In 1530 Luther advanced the view that two offenses should be
penalized even with death, namely sedition and blasphemy. The
emphasis was thus shifted from incorrect belief to its public mani-
festation by word and deed. This was, however, no great gain for
liberty, because Luther construed mere abstention from public office
and military service as sedition and a rejection of an article of the
Apostles* Creed as blasphemy.

In a memorandum of 1531, composed by Melanehthon and signed
by Luther, a rejection of the ministerial office was described as in-
sufferable blasphemy, and the disintegration of the Church as sedi-
tion against the ecclesiastical order. In a memorandum of 1536,

376

THE MEASURE OF THE MAN

again composed by Melanchthon and signed by Luther, the distinction
between the peaceful and the revolutionary Anabaptists was ob-
literated. Philip of Hesse had asked several cities and universities
for advice as to what he should do with some thirty Anabaptists
whom he was holding under arrest. He had steadfastly refused to
inflict the death penalty and had resorted to no more than banish-
ment. But this was ineffective because the Anabaptists argued that
the earth is the Lord's and refused to stay away. Of all the replies
which Philip received those from the Lutherans were the most
severe. Melanchthon this time argued that even the passive action
of the Anabaptists in rejecting government, oaths, private property,
and marriages outside of the faith was itself disruptive of the civil
order and therefore seditious. The Anabaptist protest against the
punishment of blasphemy was itself blasphemy. The discontinuance
of infant baptism would produce a heathen society and separation
from the Church, and the formation of sects was an offense against
God.

Luther may not have been too happy about signing these memo-
randa. At any rate he appended postscripts to each. To the first he
said, "I assent. Although it seems cruel to punish them with the
sword, it is crueler that they condemn the ministry of the Word and
have no well-grounded doctrine and suppress the true and in this
way seek to subvert the civil order." Luther's addition to the second
document was a plea that severity be tempered with mercy. In 1540
he is reported in his Table Talk to have returned to the position of
Philip of Hesse that only seditious Anabaptists should be executed;
the others should be merely banished. But Luther passed by many an
opportunity to speak a word for those who with joy gave them-
selves as sheep for the slaughter. One would have thought that he
might have been moved by the case of Fritz Erbe, who died at the
Wartburg after sixteen years of incarceration. As to the effectiveness
of such severity Luther might have pondered had he learned that the
steadfastness of Erbe had converted one half of the populace of
Eisenach to Anabaptism.

377

HERE I STAND

For the understanding of Luther's position one must bear in mind
that Anabaptism was not in every instance socially innocuous. The
year in which Luther signed the memorandum counseling death even
for the peaceful Anabaptists was the year in which a group of them
ceased to be peaceful. Goaded by ten years of incessant persecution,
bands of fanatics in 1536 received a revelation from the Lord that they
should no more be as sheep for the slaughter but rather as the angel
with the sickle to reap the harvest. By forcible measures they took
over the city of Miinster in Westphalia and there inaugurated the
reign of the saints, of which Thomas Mtimzer had dreamed. Catholics
and Protestants alike conjoined to suppress the reign of the new
Daniels and Elijahs. The whole episode did incalculable damage to
the reputation of the Anabaptists, who before and after were peace-
able folk. But this one instance of rebellion engendered the fear that
sheep's clothing concealed wolves who might better be dealt with
before they threw off the disguise. In Luther's case it should further
be remembered that the leading Anabaptist in Thuringia was Mclchior
Rink, and he had been with Thomas Miinr/xT at the battle of
Frankenhausen, Yet when all of these attenuating considerations
are adduced, one cannot forget that Mclanchthon's memorandum
justified the eradication of the peaceful, not because they were
incipient and clandestine revolutionaries, but on the ground that even
a peaceful renunciation of the state itself constituted sedition.

The other point to remember alike in the case of Luther and
Meianchthon is that they were quite as much convinced as was the
church of the inquisition that the truth of God can be known, and
being known lays supreme obligations upon mankind to preserve
it unsullied. The Anabaptists were regarded as the corrupters of souls,
Luther's leniency toward them is the more to be remarked than his
severity. He did insist to the end that faith is not to be forced, that in
private a man may believe what he will, that only open revolt or
public attack on the orthodox teaching should be penalizedin his
own words, that only sedition and blasphemy rather than heresy
should be subject to constraint,

378

THE MEASURE OF THE MAN
ATTITUDE TO THE JEWS

Another dissenting group to attract Luther's concern was the
Jews. He had early believed that they are a stiff-necked people to
have rejected Christ, but contemporary Jews could not be blamed
for the sins of their fathers and might readily be excused for their
rejection of Christianity by reason of the corruptions of the papacy.
He said:

If I were a Jew, I would suffer the rack ten times before I would go
over to the pope.

The papists have so demeaned themselves that a good Christian would
rather be a Jew than one of them, and a Jew would rather be a sow than
a Christian.

What good can we do the Jews when we constrain them, malign them,
and hate them as dogs? When we deny them work and force them to
usury, how can that help? We should use toward the Jews not the
pope's but Christ's law of love. If some are stiff-necked, what does that
matter? We are not all good Christians.

Luther was sanguine that his own reform, by eliminating the abuses
of the papacy, would accomplish the conversion of the Jews. But the
converts were few and unstable. When he endeavored to proselytize
some rabbis, they undertook in return to make a Jew of him. The
rumor that a Jew had been suborned by the papists to murder him
was not received with complete incredulity. In Luther's latter days,
when he was often sorely frayed, news came that in Moravia, Chris-
tians were being induced to Judaize. Then he came out with a vulgar
blast in which he recommended that all the Jews be deported to
Palestine. Failing that, they should be forbidden to practice usury,
should be compelled to earn their living on the land, their synagogues
should be burned, and their books including the Bible should be taken
away from them.

One could wish that Luther had died before ever this tract was
written. Yet one must be clear as to what he was recommending
and why. His position was entirely religious and in no respect racial.
The supreme sin for him was the persistent rejection of God's

379

HERE I STAND

revelation of himself in Christ. The centuries of Jewish suffering
were themselves a mark of the divine displeasure. The territorial
principle should be applied to the Jews. They should be compelled
to leave and go to a land of their own. This was a program of enforced
Zionism. But if it were not feasible, then Luther would recommend
that the Jews be compelled to live from the soil. He was unwittingly
proposing a return to the condition of the early Middle Ages, when
the Jews had been in agriculture. Forced off the land, they had gone
into commerce and, having been expelled from commerce, into money
lending. Luther wished to reverse the process and thereby inadvertent-
ly would accord the Jews a more secure position than they enjoyed
in his day. The burning of the synagogues and the confiscation of the
books was, however, a revival of the worst features of Pfefferkorn's
program. One other word must be added: if similar tracts did not
appear in England, France, and Spain in Luther's day, it was because
the Jews had already been completely expelled from these countries,
Germany, disorganized in this as in so many other respects, expelled
the Jews from certain localities and tolerated them in others, such as
Frankfurt and Worms. The irony of the situation was that Luther
justified himself by appealing to the ire of Jehovah against those who
go awhoring after other gods. Luther would not have listened to
any impugning of the validity of this picture of God, but he might
have recalled that Scripture itself discountenances human imitation
of the divine vengeance.

THE PAPISTS AND THE KMPKROR

The third group toward whom Luther became more bitter was the
papists. His railing against the pope became perhaps the more vitu-
perative because there was so little else that could be done. Another
public appearance such as that at Worms, where an ampler confession
could be made, was denied Luther, and the martyrdom which came
to others also passed him by. He compensated by hurling vitriol
Toward the very end of his life he issued an illustrated tract with
outrageously vulgar cartoons. In all of this he was utterly unre-
strained.

380

THE MEASURE OF THE MAN

The case was different in his attitude toward the emperor. Here
Luther entertained his last great illusion* Even in 1531 he lauded
Charles for his previous clemency and could not be persuaded that
the emperor would yield to the goading of the papists. But should
he do so and should he take up arms to suppress the gospel, then

TERTIAVOX. ALTVS.

PRIMA PARS.

*-*

IVAT.VIVAT.VIVAT.VIVAT IOANNBS FRIDERICH,
ELECTOR ETDVXSAXONVM,
DEFENSOR VERI DOGMATIS,
PACISOJ/E CVSTOS PERVIGIL,
V1VAT PER OMNE SECVLVM.

THE LOWER MAGISTRATE: JOHN FREDERICK, ELECTOR OF SAXONY

his subjects should do no more than refuse to serve under his ban-
ners, and for the rest should leave the outcome to the Lord, who
delivered Lot from Sodom. Should God not intervene to preserve
his own, yet would he be the Lord God, and under no circumstances
should subjects take up arms against the powers ordained. The next
year, however, Luther was brought to observe that the word used
by the apostle Paul, namely "powers," is in the plural, and that al-
though the common man may not take the sword which is committed
only to the "power," yet one power may legitimately exercise a
check even by the sword upon another. In other words, one depart-

381

HERE I STAND

merit of the government may employ force to restrain the injustice
of another. The Holy Roman Empire \vas a constitutional monarchy,
and the emperor had sworn at his coronation that no German subject
should be outlawed unheard and uncondemncd. Although this clause
had not been invoked to protect a monk accused of heresy, yet when
princes and electors came to be involved the case was altered.
If Charles were faithless to that oath, then he might be resisted even
in arms by the lower magistrates. The formula thus suggested to
Luther by the jurists was destined to have a very wide and extended
vogue. The Lutherans employed it only until they gained legal recog-
nition in 1555. Thereafter the Calvmists took up the slogan and
equated the lower magistrates with the lesser nobility in France.
Subsequently the Puritans in England made the same identification
with Parliament, Later historians are so accustomed to regard Luther-
anism as politically subservient and Calvinism as intransigent that
they would do well to recall the origin of this doctrine on Lutheran
soil,

But it was not the invention of Luther, even though he accepted
its validity, never, however, without a measure of misgiving and such
qualification as to make one uncertain whether his conditions were
ever actually fulfilled. The emperor, he felt, might be forcibly resisted,
not in case he should reintroduce the mass, but only in case he en-
deavored to force the Lutherans to attend the inas& This the emperor
did only after Luther's death when Philip of Hesse was captured
and required to be present at the celebration, Whether in that instance
Luther would have felt the time had come for the legitimate use of
the sword we shall never know. 1 Ic was always ready to disobey,
but exceedingly loath to raise a hand against the Lord's anointed.

Such were the public questions which engaged the later years, but
in none of them could Luther do much more than write a memoran-
dum* He must devote his labors to more restricted tasks, and that he
did by preference. "A cow,*' said he, "docs not get to heaven by giving
milk, but that is what she is made for/' and by the same token he
would say that Martin Luther by his ministry could not settle the

382

THE MEASURE OF THE MAN

fate of Europe, but for the ministry he was made. To all the obli-
gations of university and parish he gave himself unremittingly. To
the end he was preaching, lecturing, counseling, and writing. How-
ever much the superb defiance of the earlier days might degenerate
into the peevishness of one racked by disease, labor, and discourage-
ment, yet a case of genuine need would always restore his sense of
proportion and bring him into the breach. The closing events of
his life are an example. He was in such a panic of disgust because the
girls at Wittenberg were wearing low necks that he left home de-
claring that he would not return. His physician brought him back.
Then came a request from the counts of Mansfeld for a mediator
in a dispute. Melanchthon was too sick to go. Luther was too sick
to live. He went, reconciled the
counts, and died on the way
home.

Luther's later years are, how-
ever, by no means to be written
off as the sputterings of a dying
flame. If in his polemical tracts
he was at times savage and
coarse, in the works which con-
stitute the real marrow of his
life's endeavor he grew con-
stantly in maturity and artistic
creativity. The biblical transla-
tion was improved to the very
end. The sermons and the bibli-
cal commentaries reached su-
perb heights. The delineation
of the sacrifice of Isaac, already
quoted, comes from the year
1545. Some of the passages

cited throughout this book to illustrate Luther's religious and ethical
principles are also from the later period.

383

LUTHER IN THE YEAR OF His DEATH

HERE I STAND
THE MEASURE OF THE MAN

When one comes to take the measure of the man, there are three
areas which naturally suggest themselves. The first is his own Ger-
many. He called himself the German prophet, saying that against
the papist asses he must assume so presumptuous a title, and he ad-
dressed himself to his beloved Germans. The claim is frequent that
no man did so much to fashion the character of the German people.
Their indiff erence to politics and their passion for music were already
present in him. Their language was so far fashioned by his hand
that the extent of their indebtedness is difficult to recognize. If a
German is asked whether a passage of Luther's Bible is not remark-
able, he may answer that this is precisely the way in which any
German would speak. But the reason is simply that every German has
been reared on Luther's version. The influence of the man on his
people was deepest in the home. In fact the home was the only sphere
of life which the Reformation profoundly affected. Economics went
the way of capitalism and politics the way of absolutism. But the
home took on that quality of affectionate and godly patriarchalism
which Luther had set as the pattern in his own household. The most
profound impact of Luther on his people was in their religion. His
sermons were read to the congregations, his liturgy was sung, his
catechism was rehearsed by the father with the household, his Bible
cheered the fainthearted and consoled the dying. If no Englishman
occupies a similar place in the religious life of his people, it is because
no Englishman had anything like Luther's range. The Bible trans-
lation in England was the work of Tyndale, the prayer book of
Cranmer t the catechism of the Westminster divines, The sermonic
style stemmed from Latimer; the hymnbook came from Watts,
And not all of these lived in one century, Luther did the work of
more than five men. And for sheer richness and exuberance of vocabu-
lary and mastery of style he is to be compared only with Shakespeare.
The Germans naturally claim such a German for themselves.
Yet when one begins to look over the centuries for those whom one
would most naturally compare with this man, not a single one of his

384

THE MEASURE OF THE MAN

stature proves to be a German. In fact a German historian has said
that in the course of three hundred years only one German ever
really understood Luther, and that one was Johann Sebastian Bach.
If one would discover parallels to Luther as the wrestler with the
Lord, then one must turn to Paul the Jew, Augustine the Latin, Pascal
the Frenchman, Kierkegaard the Dane, Unamuno the Spaniard,
Dostoevski the Russian, Bunyan the Englishman, and Edwards the
American.

And that is why in the second great area, that of the Church,
Luther's influence extends so far beyond his own land. Lutheranism
took possession of Scandinavia and has an extensive following in the
United States, and apart from that his movement gave the impetus
which sometimes launched and sometimes helped to establish' the
other varieties of Protestantism. They all stem in some measure from
him. And what he did for his own people to a degree, he did also
for others. His translation, for example, affected the English version.
Tyndale's preface is taken from Luther. His liturgical reforms like-
wise had an influence on the Book of Common Prayer. And even the
Catholic Church owes much to him. Often it is said that had Luther
never appeared, an Erasmian reform would have triumphed, or at any
rate a reform after the Spanish model. All of this is of course con-
jectural, but it is obvious that the Catholic Church received a tre-
mendous shock from the Lutheran Reformation and a terrific urge
to reform after its own pattern.

The third area is of all the most important and the only one which
to Luther mattered much, and that is the area of religion. Here it is
that he must be judged. In his religion he was a Hebrew, not a Greek
fancying gods and goddesses disporting themselves about some limpid
pool or banqueting upon Olympus. The God of Luther, as of Moses,
was the God who inhabits the storm clouds and rides on the wings of
the wind. At his nod the earth trembles, and the people before him
are as a drop in the bucket. He is a God of majesty and power, in-
scrutable, terrifying, devastating, and consuming in his anger. Yet the
All Terrible is the All Merciful too. "Like as a father pitieth his

385

HERE I STAND

children, so the Lord , , . " But how shall we know this? In Christ,
only in Christ. In the Lord of life, born in the squalor of a cow stall
and dying as a malefactor under the desertion and the derision of
men, crying unto God and receiving for answer only the trembling of
the earth and the blinding of the sun, even by God forsaken, and in
that hour taking to himself and annihilating our iniquity, trampling
down the hosts of hell and disclosing within the wrath of the All
Terrible the love that will not let us go. No longer did Luther tremble
at the rustling of a wind-blown leaf, and instead of calling upon St.
Anne he declared himself able to laugh at thunder and jagged bolts
from out the storm. This was what enabled him to utter such words
as these: "Here 1 stand* I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen."

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39S

REFERENCES

KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS

ADAleander Depeschen (Kalkoff, ed.)

AnnAnnales

ARGArchiv fur Reformations geschichte

Bd Buchwald, Luthers Predigten

BDFBriefe, Depeschen und Berichte

(see Kalkoff)
B^el-Bible in WA
BR-Brief<wechsel in WA
CR Corpus reformatorum
Dok (JQDokumente zum Ablassstreit

von mi (Walther Koehler, ed., 1902)
Dok (S)Dokumente zu Luthers En-

twicklung (Otto Scheel, ed., 1929)
EAErlangen Ausgabe
EEErasmi epistolae
EpEpistolae Ulrichi Huttenis
FForschungen
JLGJahrbuch der Luthergesellschaft

LJ Luther Jahrbuch

QFRGQuellen und Forschungen zur

Reformations geschichte
ova Opera varii argumenti in EA
RA Deutsche Reichstagsakten

SVRG-Schriften des Vereins fur Refor-
mationsgeschichte

TR-Tischreden in WA

VLGVierteljahrschrift der Luther-
gesellschaft

W Walch ed. of Luther's works
WA Weimar Ausgabe, ordinarily re-
ferred to simply by volume and page

ZHTZeitschrift fur die historische
Theologie

ZKG-Zeitschrift fur Kirchengeschlchte

ZSTZeitschrift fur systematische The-
ologie

For full titles see the bibliography.

PAGE LINE

CHAP. I

23 21 TR, 3566 A (1537)

23 25 TR, 1559 (1532)

23 29 TR, 5571 (1543)

24 12 XXXVIII, 338

25 14 Scheel, 1, 290, n. 13

26 12 Boehmer, JL, p. 24

27 9 TR, 3841

28 9 TR, 3593, p. 439

29 23 Gerke, TLBL, XI, 320

30 9 Sullen, p. XXV

30 24 Dok (S), Nos. 346, 358, 381

32 7 Coulton, 1, 92

32 15 Coulton, III, 17

33 13 Dok (S), No, 371

PAGE LINE

33 22 Scheel, 1, 95, n. 65

34 3 Buchwald, LL, p. 6

34 14 Dok (S), under Eintritt

35 18 Scheel, 1, 261-62

CHAP. II

37 3 Do (S), No. 50

38 6 Scheel, II, 35-36

38 17 Ibid., II, 62

39 2 Dok (S),No. 35
39 29 Ibid., Nos. 24, 477
41 19 Ibid., under Primitz
41 29 Ibid., No. 201

44 5 Ibid., Nos. 286, 303, 343,
508, 536

397

HERE I STAND

PAGE LINE

45 19

45 22

45 23

45 25

45 27

45 28

45 33

46 8

46 24

47 35

48 4

48 29

49 16

50 2
50 IB

50 22

51 5
51 12

52 16

53 15

54 17
54 18
54 26

54 32

55 11
55 12
55 17
55 21

55 31

56 24

57 30

58
58
58
58
58 12

58 14

59 10
59 10

59 21

59 33

62 13

62 20

63 30

64 6
64 7

Ibid., No. 418

Ibid., No. 176

Ibid., No. 346

Ibid., No. 180

Ibid., No. 90

/Mi, No. 470

XXXVIII, 143

Schecl, II, 209

X, 3, 244

Paulus, Ablass, 111, 451

TR, 4H29

Schecl, II, 523-26

Boehmcr, Rowfahrt

Dok (S), No. 479

TR, 3478

TR, 6453

Dok (S), No. 527

Schecl, II, 334

CHAP. Ill

TR, Nos. 3642, 22 10/>, 2880a

Dok (S), No. 461

Ibid- No. 52

Ibid., No. 84

/Mi, Nos, 199, 241

Ibid., No. 487

XXIV, 94

XIX, 209

XXIV, 96

VI, 159-69
Lev, 26:36
Jacobs edL, I, 76-78

TR, 6561 (German) zz #,

1340 (Latin)
Dok (S), No. 362
/Mi, No. 18
/Mi, No. 460
/Mi, Nos. 346, 358
/Mi, No. 62
Ibid., No, 418
XVIII, 719
LIV, 185; XIV, 132; II, 688;

TR, 2654*; Schecl, II, 307-

9; Dok (S), Nos, 275, 207
Dok (S), Nos. 225, 256, 262
Dok (S), Nos. 174, 230, 444,

485
1, 557
Vogelsang, ACh, 24; X f 3,

75; XXVII, 108-10
IV, 243

VII, 364
LV1, 381

398

PACK LINE

64 8 LVI, 392

65 27 LIV, 185
65 34 XXXII, 328

67 7 XXXV, 421-22

CHAP. IV

68 26 Boehmcr, //-, p. 132

69 13 flJR, 28

71 17 Kalkoff, A Mass

71 33 Dok (K), No. 30, pp. 94-95

71 34 Koestlin-Kawerau, 1, 142

74 21 fiebhardt, Groiw/ww, p. 85

75 35 Schuhc, /*Vtftft'r, p. 117

77 7 Dok (K), No. 31

78 34 Ibid., No. 32 and p. 132, and

Paulus, Tctzcl

79 29 Raynald, Amahs, XX, 160
83 11 From Kochicr, U 9$ Thesen

CHAP. V

85 13 BR, 48
85 17 77*, 263

85 18 CSicsslcr. KG, III, 38, ru 1

86 2 If, XV, No. 144
86 16 m, 64

86 20 #R, 72

86 24 /*, 75

86 26 I, 350-51

86 30 BK, No. 83, p, 186, n. 22;
Kalkoif, F, 47; Strack,
6V/tosc*r/jc//i5 } 132

86 34 BK> 75

87 6 Ikatus Rhcnamxs, BR, No.

75, p. 10H

87 14 /?K, 75; cf. Bauer
87 22 Dak (K), p. 132

87 26 M, 64

88 13 I, 526
8B 19 1, 571

HH 35 8R, 92 and 1, 201

89 II I, 635-45; Kawerau, Tkesm

89 28 ow, I, 341-46

90 9 1, 650, 647, 677 t 657, 685

90 18 MiiUtfr, L$ row* Prvzess

91 2 RA, II, 461

91 27 w, II, 349-50

9! 34 TR, 266Ha

91 35 ##,97

92 17 IK, XV, No. 174

92 35 /Mi, No, 166, and BR, 112

93 7 0va, II, 354-58

REFERENCES

PAGE LINE

93 12 BR, 105

93 16 Archivio star, ital., XXTV
(1876), 23

93 32 ova, II, 352-53; cf. Kolde,

ZKG, II, 472-80

94 2 Kalkoff, F, 59

95 3 BR, 99

95 13 Do* (S), No. 10

96 11 BR, 99-110; Ada Aug. WA,

96 13 BR, 100

96 21 BR, 99

96 25 W, XV, 208

96 27 Koestlin-Kawerau, 211

96 33 TR, 225, 409

96 35 II, 17; BR, 1, 242

97 22 II, 27-33

97 24 BR, I, 242; II, 17

97 27 TR, 5349, p. 78

97 31 BR, 105

98 3 BR, 110

98 24 II, 18-22 = ova, 1, 386-92

98 35 II, 39-40

99 4 BR, 124

99 30 W, XV, No. 247
100 2 BR, 110 = I, 245
100 8 BR, 114

100 11 TR, 5349, p. 79

100 15 BR, 112

100 22 BR, 119

100 24 BR, 118

100 27 BR, 116

100 28 TR, 1203

100 30 BR, 121, p. 271

101 24 BR, I, 250

101 28 BR, 124

CHAP. VI

102 11 II, 447

102 21 ova, II, 423-32
104 7 Kalkoff, F, 184-87

104 19 W, XV, No. 311

104 24 Smith, Corr., No. 108

104 28 BR, 205, cf. 196; TR, 156;
TR, 3413

104 31 W, XV, Nos, 249-53

105 2 BR, 152
105 3 BR, 196

105 6 W, XIV, p. 445
105 9 BR, 140

105 12 RA, I, 824; BR, No. 122,
p. 274

PAGE LINE

105 14 BR, 204

105 16 BR, 134, 136

105 19 BR, 140

105 26 Smith, Corr., I, 570

106 2 W, XV, Nos. 284, 297-99,

302, 306-8, 321-27

106 23 BR, 82, 249

106 30 TR, 22630

107 34 BR, 151

108 4 W, XVIII, No. 32
108 15 II, 180-239

108 29 W, XV, 393

108 32 BR, 167

109 6 BR, 141
109 12 BR, 161

111 24 W, XV, Nos. 392, 396

111 26 BR, I, 442, n. 9

111 28 W, XV, No. 396

112 1 Ibid., No. 392, cf. No. 396

and BR, I, 442, n. 9

112 13 W, XV, Nos. 390, 392

112 24 W, XV, Nos. 395, 393

112 27 BR, I, pp. 477, 498

112 30 BR, 187; W, XV, No. 396

112 31 Ibid., No. 392

112 34 BR, I, 428-30

113 19 W, XV, p. 1201; Smith,

Corr., I, 262; Loescher,
Analecta, III, 248

114 6 II, 400
114 15 II, 313-14
114 21 II, 316

114 35 Decret., pt. I, dist. 22, .2;

dist. 21, .21

115 10 II, 265, 276, 279, 285; BR, I,

p. 422; Koehler, LKG

115 19 11,275

116 2 Ibid., 279, 287

116 3 W, XV, No. 392, p. 1207

117 1 II, 280-308

117 4 II, 400; BR, I, 471

117 5 II, 649; BR, I, 391

117 7 II, 427

117 8 BR, No. 192, p. 472

117 11 II, 282

117 17 W, XV, p. 1318

117 21 II, 283

117 24 II, 311

117 27 II, 406

117 33 II, 324

119 1 BR, I, 422

119 12 II, 404

119 18 W, XV, p. 1199

399

HERE I STAND

PAGE

LINE P A K

LINE

119

Ibid., p. 1215

144

lbid.> 593

119

BR, I, 451

144

Sanuto, Dictrii, XXVIII, col.

120

BR, 185, 1H6

549

120

11, 702

145

BR, 122

120

BR, 254

145

Kaikoff, 7.KQ, XXV, 115,

n. 2; Schubert,

Spcngler,

CHAP. VII

220, n. 2

121

BR, 146^

145

CKW, IV, 310-14 =
E Op., 322

Ferguson,

123

Furrier, Xw/wg//, 3 i >

147

MVI, l\\ 2H3

123

BR, 213

147

OTW, IV, 312 s

Ferguson,

123

EC cuts Jjcdtil&tits

E Op., 325

125
125

28
30

II, 449
BR, 163 = ER> 932

148
148

1
21

<ww, IV, 269, 290,
or<i, \\ 10-12

293

125

BR, 50

148

Ps, 91:21, 24

126

Op,, IV, 474

14H

BR, 295

126

Op., I, 870

149

VI, 347

126
126
126

25
6

Op> VI, 64 D-K
AMR. Werfai 205-6
Spcnglcr, Schur&wdv

349
150

23
13

VII, 645-46
BR, 333, p. 189

328

Op., IV, 459-60

ClIAl*. IX

128
129

28
10

ER, Nos. 939, 967, 1033, 1167
Benz

151

BR, 310

130
132
132
133
133
134

12
2
6
6
30
8

Panofsky, Dwrcr, I, 398 99
Op., IV, 262-64
Op, 1, 167
I, 378-79
BK, 360
Schadcs II, 1-59

151
156
157
157
157
157

5
7
14
19
26

Kalkntf, XKG, XXV, 129-30
Iklnn, No. 3
// No. 4
Schubert, Spcn^cr^ 241
KE, No. 1167, p. 409

134
134

17
21

BR, 281
BR, 298

157
158

Schubert, SptM$lc\

r, 232, 241

BR, 287

15H

Wictlcnuuin, jKr/r,

156-65

BR, MO

I5H

Schubert, r^r^jre

ibid**, 21

135
135

t
5
16

BR\ 323
BR, 282

15K
158

16
20

H f , XV, No. 466
BR, 340, 348, *51,

352

135

BR, 368

158

If, XV, No, 340

158

Wicdcniitnn, /CrX 1 ,

165

CHAP. VIII

159

KnlkofT, Anfiwxc

160

Hcutus Rhenaiuis,

BR, No.

137

VI, 497-573

194; Frtctjuicr,

Altttmdre,

137

KK, 1203

172-73; cf. /JO,

17; jR/l, II,

138

VI, 563-64

472

139

139
140

141

35
12
10

W> XV, No, 238, p. 640;
cf. BR, 110, p. 237
Koehler, /,, 50-52
Rornkamm, J-gM', Chap. V
X 3 1

160

161

163

26
3
17

J7/imw O/?. t HI, 455-59
BR, 341
H', XV, No. 442, sec, 39-42
BR, 351

IT*

141

f%, .*, A

VI, 521

163

VI, 597-612

142
143

III, 304; Scchcrg, I, 131 Ml
0w, IV, 172-85

164

165

20
8

VII, 42-49
MM., 125

143

VI, 181-95

165

Urid*) 135

144

Kolde, ZKQ, II, 460-70

166

MM., 183

144

BR, 2H5

166

MM., lH4-85j BR

, 361; ;

144

Kalkof , ZKG, XXV, 589-91

XV, No. 46

400

REFERENCES

PAGE LINE

166 13 VII, 161-82

166 21 W,XV, No. 519

CHAP. X

167 16 RA, II, 90-94

168 5 AD, 48

168 28 Ep. 229, cf. Op. IV, 309-31;

Ep. 233-34

169 1 Kalkotf, WR, 213, n. 3
169 7 AD, 182

169 14 RA, II, 471

169 19 Balan, Nos. 13, 32, 34, 52

169 31 Ferguson, E Op., 334-35; cf.

336-37, 352-61

170 6 AD, p. 92
170 10 Ep, 230
170 11 Ep, 247

170 15 W, XV, No. 526 and Balan,

P- 18

170 24 BR, 349; WA, VI, 477-80

170 30 Spalatin, Ann., p. 29; Seck-

endorf, I, 126; RA, II, 464,

n. 1

170 32 EE, 1166, p. 399

172 3 W, XV, 1585

172 9 RA, II, No. 61

172 35 Balan, No. 34, pp. 85-86

173 3 AD, p. 34

173 5 Balan, No. 35 T p. 90

173 10 RA, II, No. 62

173 20 Ibid., No. 63

174 9 BR, 365

174 39 BR, 376

175 4 AD, p. 36

175 13 BR, 371, p. 254

175 26 AD, pp. 35-36

176 11 AD, pp. 30, 40, 55-57, 82
176 22 Huttcn, Ep., 247, p. 63;

Kalkoff, BDB, p. 6

176 25 AD, p. 56

177 2 Schade, II, 177
177 4 RA, II, 476, n. 3

177 14 AD, p. 169

178 5 J&4, II, 496-505
178 12 RA, II, No. 68
178 15 AD, p. 73

178 23 RA, II, No. 69

178 28 Ibid., No. 72

178 33 Ibid., No. 74

179 2 AD, p. 101
179 5 RA, II, No. 73
179 14 BR, 389

179 18 BR, 391

PAGE LINE

179 25 BR, 395, 396

179 28 BR, 395

180 4 Hutteni Op., II, 52-53; cf.

AD, pp. 183, 198

180 23 RA, II, No. 66

181 9 RA, II, No. 78

181 11 Spalatin, Ann., p. 38; W.

XV, No. 554

181 15 Op., II, 62, 55

181 19 W, XV, No. 557

181 24 AD, p. 170

183 4 RA, II, p. 851

183 17 RA, II, pp. 548-49, 574

183 27 Kalkoff, BDB, 52

183 32 Ibid., Note 112; RA, II, No.

209, p. 885

184 16 AD, p. 152

185 7 RA 9 II, pp. 551-55
185 24 VII, 836-38

185 33 RA, II, p. 555

186 6 AD, p. 153; RA, p. 558
186 9 Spalatin, Ann., 49-50
186 10 RA, II, p. 867

186 13 Spalatin, Ann., 50-51

186 33 RA, II, pp. 595-96

187 4 Ibid., II, p. 596, n. 3

188 2 Op., II, 61
188 3 AD, 158

188 9 AD, 160; JR/4, II, No. 84

188 29 RA, II, No. 86; pp. 617, 621

188 33 Ibid., No. 85, pp. 603, 610

188 35 RA, II, p. 631

189 5 BR, 404, p. 325

189 26 RA, II, No. 92

190 8 AD, pp. 221-24

CHAP. XI

191 9 Durer, Brief e, 121

192 17 Clemen, Beitr'dge, III, 10-15;

Bainton, Durer

192 24 Kalkoff, Anfange, II, 22

192 27 Kalkoff, Vermittlung, ARG,

192 36 Durer, Briefe, 119-22

193 23 BR, 408; TR, 5353
193 30 VIII, 211

193 32 TR, 6816, p. 209

194 1 VIII, 412, 483; XXXVI, 476
194 5 VIII, 139

194 12 I Kings 19:4

194 23 BR, 429

194 28 BR, 407

194 33 BR, 435

4OI

HERE I STAND

PAGE LINE

195 2 BR, 429

195 7 BR> 410, p. 338

195 13 BR, 427

195 15 BR> 409

195 16 BR, 413, p. 348

195 20 #K, 417

195 25 BJR, Nos. 413, 418-20, 429,

434

197 4 Tfl, Nos. 495, 1253, 542K,

6077

197 7 VIII, 139

197 16 BR, 435

198 16 BR> 442
198 18 BR> 448
200 10 VI, 441

200 13 BR y 442, p. 408

200 19 N. Miiller, U'fl, No. 102

200 25 CR, 1, No. 184

200 27 7*K, 444

200 31 BR> 426

200 33 N, Mullcr, WB, No. 31

201 4 Ibid., No, 28
201 14 1*R, 424, 428
201 20 V1H 317
201 27 VIII, 330

201 33 VIII, 569

202 14 VIII, 441-42
202 20 VIII, 448

202 33 BR, No. 424, p. 372

203 6 N, Mullcr, If 'ft, 612
203 17 K. Mullcr, J.K, 6
203 26 /Wrf., p. 24

203 29 N, Mullcr, 1KB, Nos. 25, 28

204 36 CR, I, No. 150

204 20 Frederick: Cfl, I, No. 145;

N. Mullcr, in*, No. 56;
Old Believers: N. Miller,
Nos. 25, 44; F.vangeiicals:
CR,t, No. 161 ;N. Miillcr,
WB, No. 43

CHAP, XII

205 H BR, 443

205 14 N. Miillcr, WB, 159
205 21 K. Mullcr, /,K, 27

205 23 BK, 438

206 1 Dan, 8:25

206 3 VIH, 676-87

207 9 Barge, Carlstadt, I, 357-61;

N, Mullcr, H'fl, No. 73
207 16 N, Mullcr, WB, No. 75;
Barge, Carlstetdt, I, 379-86
207 20 N. Mftlter, WB^ No, 72

208
208
208

208
209
209
209
209
210
210
210
210
210

210
211
211
212
2H
2H
214
214
214
214

215

216

2m
2m

217
217
217
217
217
217
21H
218
2IH
218
218
218
219
219
22
220
221
221

LINE

9 Carlsradt, Von Abtwmg

17 Biirge, Karhtadt, I, 368-69
26 CR, I, Nos, 170, 183; N,

Miillcr, JP#, Nos. 63, 54,
68, p. 160; BR, 450
3H CR, I, No. 170

3 CA\ 1, No. 183, col. 536
11 BR, 450

15 BR, 452

32 Pallas, ARQ, V, 238-40

4 //>*<*., Nos. 3, 4

11 N. Miillcr, WB, No. 92

18 1/wL, No. 97

21 /?#, II, p. 462, n. 4

29 Be/old, "Riickkchr," XKG,

XX, 223-26
31 ftK, 44S
4 SK, 444
M) M, 454

22 M, 455

^3 Kcsslcr, .9aWwM, 76-80

^5 Bcatus Uhcnanus, BK, 303

7 X, 3,47

2^ //w/., pp. 25, 18-19

25 BR, 47H

35 Ale, No. 456,p.4$1;No.457 v
p. 469

CHAP. XIII

26 ,R^, H, No. m
7 M 1826

2* 1 Cor. 3:11
29 II, 5H6

.M xxxvin, 53
^ xix, 4%

Am 17:28

XXIII, M5-J7; Ps. U9:7-8

XXVIII, 53

VII, 5H7; XV, 370
XIX, V0
XI, IV, 429
XXVH, 4H2-H3
XVIH, 626
XMV, 429
XXXI, I, 249
XVIH, AKS
XL, 2, *2WO
XXXVII, 40
Is;i. 9; 2
XIX, 133
UJ, 55-56
Acts 16:?1

402

REFERENCES

PAGE LINE

221

XIX, 154

243

221

TR, 4201

243

223

TR, 5015

243

223

XL, 1, 455

244

224

XXVII, 154

244

224

V, 550

244

224

IX, 610

244

224

XIX, 492

226

BR, 424

245

227

Dok (S), 672, 755; BR, 428,

245

227

p. 383
Bd, I, 99

245
246

29
2

227

BR, 1593

227

Bd, I, 88

227

Ibid., I, 90

249

227

Ibid., I, 249

227

LVI, 304, 361

249

228

IV, 324, 364

249

228
228

10
18

LVI, 231
II, 496

249

228
231

26
8

Bd, II, 25
VII, 53, 59-64

249
249
250

31
35

CHAP. XIV

250

233
233

TR, 2223
TR, 2123

251

234

TR, 5360

251

234

VII, 575

251

234

LII, 399-400

251

234

XXXII, 292-94

252

234

Bd, II, 518, 528; WA 9 VII,

252

244

252

234

TR, 437

252

235

XXX, 2, 570-75

252

235

TR, 5252

253

237

XV, 321

254

238

II, 252

255

238

XVIII, 389

255

238

XXVIII, 525

255

238

BR, 365

255

239

XXIX, 355

256

239

XL, 1, 292

256

239

VI, 459

258

239

XLI, 747

239
240

35
16

II, 254-61
Ibid., II, 261

258

241

XIX, 625-26

261

241

XLI, 746-47

262

241

XXVIII, <599

263

241

XVIII, 391

263

241

VI, 267

263

241

XVI, 474

264

242

II, 268-69

264

244 32 Pauls, 69; LII, 189; XXXVII,

319

245 13 XXVIII, 360-61 ; Matthes, 143

Bd, I, 147
9 Bd, I, 555-56
2 Bd, I, 572

CHAP. XV

N. Miiller, WB, No. 25, pp.

62-63

Kalkoff, Ablass, 85
Ibid., 115-16
BR, 558, 566
BR, 572, 586, 678, 748
BR, 648
BR, 799
Bainton, Development, 113-

W, XV, No. 716
Ibid^ No. 717
Planitz, No. 121, p. 271
Ibid., No. 153
Ibid., No. 29
BR, 956
X, 2, 227
BR, 914

Smith, Corr., No. 737
Op., IX, 1215-48
XVIII, 719
Ibid^ 758-59
Ibid., 784-85
BR, 626

Op., X, 1251, 1257-58
BR, 726
XV, 392
W, XX, Nos. 6, 7; XV, 391-

XV, 394
XVII, 1, 361-62
XV, 199-200
Ibid., 210-11
BR, 754

Boehmer-Kirn, No. 56
Brandt, Muentzer, 148-63
BR, 785

403

HERE I STAND

PAGE LINE

PACE LINE

CHAP. XVI

292 27 BR, 3519

265 18 BR, 797
265 19 BR, IV, p. 2, n. 4
265 25 Koehlcr, LZ, 146-47
266 10 II Cor. 3:6

292 29 BR, 3509
292 33 TR, 2437
293 3 Thonia
293 6 BR, 1032

266 11 John 6:63
266 26 Koehlcr, LZ 9 111
266 31 Ibid., 466

293 7 TR, 146
293 9 77*> 2458, 2397/>
293 12 BR, 932

267 3 Koehlcr, Gcistcswclt, 14
267 6 Koehlcr, LZ, 175, 328
274 24 XVIII, 291-334
275 14 Franz, 242, 249-51

293 15 BR, 1013
293 17 BR, 1017
293 19 TR, 2447
293 22 BR, 1067

278 3 Bochmcr-Kirn, 118, 124;

293 26 TR, 3541

Brandt, Mucntzer, 187-201
278 12 Bochmcr-Kirn, 110
280 16 XVIII, 358

293 29 TR, HOI
295 12 TR, 3298*
296 37 7'R, Nos. 301, 397, 566, 613,
1038, 1106, 1637, 2258*,

CHAP. XVII

2439, 2K49&, 28K9a-, 3627,

286 10 BR, 426
286 12 TR, 1654, 3177
286 24 BR, 600
287 2 Bcatus Rhenanus, BR, p. 319
287 8 BR, 800

3637*, 3901, 4351, 5378,
5742, 5847, 6238, 6250
298 9 TR, 2S6te
29H 26 TR, 6725
299 5 XX, 149

287 18 BR, 857
287 27 BR, 782
288 11 BR, 890, 900
288 17 BR, 860

299 9 TR, 55
299 14 TR, 6102
299 1H 7V*, 3566
299 32 XXX, 3, 236

288 21 BR, 883

300 1 XXIV, 518-21

288 23 BR, 900

300 24 XII, 106

288 25 TR, 49

300 26 XVII, 1, 24-25

288 27 BR, 900

300 31 X, 2, 296

288 32 Boehmcr, Ls Eht, 65

300 34 TR, mi, 1004

289 2 BR, 886

301 3 TR, 2H67*

289 8 BR, 892

301 6 X, 2, 296

289 12 BR, 897

301 12 TR, 3675

290 4 BR, 900

301 18 TR, 2047

290 7 BR, 896

301 22 TR, 4859

290 10 BR, 894

301 2H TR, 1656

290 14 BR, 898

301 30 7*R, 2I7J*

290 25 Smith, ML, 168

301 35 XXXVI, 360

290 28 TR, 1656 t 317Ba

302 1 TR, 236

290 32 BR946

302 3 TR, 35*0

291 2 BR, 906
291 11 BR, 1065
291 18 Seidcmann, ZHT, 1860, 475-
564

302 7 7*JC t 6320
302 8 TR, 3508
302 9 TR, 5524

292 2 TR, 3038*, p, 154
292 7 BR, 1078

302 10 TR, 2350tf-*
302 12 TR, 2764*

292 9 TR, 1457

302 21 TR, 2922*

292 11 BR, 1009

302 26 TH, Ml 3

292 15 Kroker, 105

302 29 TR, 2963

292 16 TR, 3390

302 32 TR, 4027

292 23 BR, 2267

303 1 TJM531

404

REFERENCES

PAGE LINE

CHAP. XVIII

CHAP. XIX

303 29 BR, 1595

304 8 XXXV, 434-35

304 21 TR, 5494, pp. 190-91

305 23 Clemen, Fhigschriften, IV,

278-80

306 11 Ibid., II, 133-34
306 13 Ibid., I, 69

306 16 Ibid., II, 147

306 18 Ibid., II, 142

309 2 Ibid., I, 10-17

309 9 Ibid., Ill, 201-3

309 24 Ibid., Ill, 362-63

309 31 Berger, V, 260-61

310 19 Sachs, Werke, I, 8-24

310 27 Clemen, Flugschriften, II,

172; cf. Berger, II, 286

311 8 BR, 465

311 14 XIX, 75; Holl L, 360; Bain-

ton, Development, 130-31

312 29 Cf. Clemen, Plugs chrift en, I,

53-54

313 19 Holl, I, 326-80

314 5 Berbig, ARQ, III, 376
314 9 Winter, 301

314 20 BR, No. 1294, pp. 498-99

315 30 RA, III, p. 386; Planitz, No*

133

316 3 RA, III, No. 242

316 4 Planitz, Nos, 200, 206, 209;

RA, III, p. 385

316 11 Planitz, No. 121, p, 273

316 16 RA, III, No. 84

316 23 RA, IV, No. 149

317 7 Friedensburg, 161-62

317 12 Ibid., 188

318 7 RA, VII, pp. 1142-43
318 11 Ibid., No. 72

318 15 Ibid., No. 137, p, 1286

319 5 BR, 1496

320 2 Koehler, Marburg, 131
320 11 Ibid., 139

322 11 Reu, AC, No. 13

323 8 BR, 1595

323 19 Schirrmacher, 55

324 5 CJR, II, 107, 115

324 23 BR, No. 1611, p. 412

324 34 BR, 1621

325 30 XXX, 2, 397-412

327 4 TR, 2771*
327 26 BR, 492

327 30 Reu, Bible, 160, 187

328 2 BR, 556

328 10 XXX, 2, 632-33

329 8 Cf. Schmidt

330 33 Grisar, L Studien, IE;

Schramm; WA, Bibel II,
625

331 4 XXX, 2, 632-33
331 27 EA, LXXIII, 115
331 29 TR, 32920

331 33 VIII, 361

332 6 Cf. Fullerton
332 10 XXX, 2, 637

334 2 Bibel, VII, ad loc.

335 33 XXX, 2, 550
337 11 XXX, 1, 249
337 23 Ibid., 126-27
339 6 Ibid., 132

341 14 TR, 4441, 7034, 968; Op.

Lat., VII, 591, 554; BR,
1727

342 26 Buszin, Music. Q. ? 95-96

343 38 L, 368-73

343 40 TR, 1300, 2362

344 10 BR, 1727
346 9 Bd, I, 539-40

346 11 Buszin, Mus. Heritage, 116

346 21 Koehler, "Lutherthum,"

SVRG, LI, 43

347 11 XXXV, 419-21; cf. 97-109

CHAP. XX

349 8 Cf. Kiessling

349 13 TR, 272

349 15 Bd, I, 555

350 17 TR, 26Q6a-b
350 35 LII, 774

352 22 Bd, I, No. 4

352 40 Bd, I, No. 28

355 7 X, 1, 62-63; XLI, 480; XVII,
2, 302; LII, 38; XVII, 2,
303; X, 1, 65-66; XXXII,
253-55; IX, 439-46

357 40 XIX, 185-251

358 35 XXXVIII, 360-62

CHAP. XXI

361 1 Reiter, II, 578
361 10 BR, 1126

405

HERE I STAND

PAGE LINE

361 20

361 25

361 27

362 27

362 30

363 14
363 17
363 18
363 21
363 22
363 24
363 25
363 27
363 29

363 31
36? 32

364 1
364 5
364 9
364 26

364 30

365 9
365 18
365 21
365 28

367 3

367 7

367 9

367 11

367 14

367 16

367 20

367 32

368 1
368 2

TR, 1289, 1113; XXVII, 96

TR, 4777

TR, 199

TR, 1557

TR, 35587;

XVII, 2, 202

TR, 4329

TR, 590

BK, 1670

TR, 1089

TR, 4857

TR, 122, p. 52

BK, 1670

TR, 1349

TR, 833; cf. BR, 16711 >

TR, 194

RatKchcrger, 58

TO, 1557

XLVI, 210

TO, 1631

TO, 660

TO, 2047

Knders, XV, 172

BK, 429

XXVII, 64

XXI, 111

IX, 440-41

BK, 1675

XXIII, 133-M

Buhlcr, 100-101

Prcuss* M/, Vwpbct, %-97

TO, 3588

XII, 459

XXVII, 482-84

XXXVH, 241

PAGE LINE

368 3 X, 1, 612-13

368 5 IX, 517-19

368 10 XVII, 2, 364-65

370 5 XLIII, 200-220

370 9 TR, 1032, 1033, 2754

370 15 Stamge

370 28 XVII, 1, 67-68

370 30 V, 607

372 20 XXXV, 455-57

CHAP, XXII

373 14 XXX, 3, 279

375 11 Rockwell, Doppckhc

375 16 RA, Vll, 1299, 1264

375 19 Wappler, KurMcbsen, 21

375 25 Menius, IVfadertattfer, 307

376 2 XXVI, 145-46
376 14 XXXI, 1, 208

376 18 CK, IV, 739-40

377 14 L,6-14

377 23 C'jR, IV, 740

377 27 TR, 5252/#

^77 34 Wapplcr, Kttrsacbsen, 41, 94

378 19 Mcnius, WicJertaufvr, 316^

379 8 TR, 29I2
379 11 XI, 314
379 16 XI, 336
379 29 LIH, 417-18

382 28 K, Miilkr, Wbdcrstond, and
Waidcck

382 $3 Brf, 1, 468
m 10 BK, 4158

383 15 Smith, Af/-, 416-22

406

SOURCES OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Jacket Copper plate by Daniel Hopfer (1523). Schreckenbach, p. 71.

End-
pieces Geisberg, Die Reformation, No. xxxv, 7.

PAGE

3 Boehmer, p. 111.

5 Johannes Luther, Die Titeleinfassungen, III (1909-13), 108.

23-24 Emil Reicke, Der Lehrer in der deutschen Vergangenheit (1901), Nos. 36, 41,

and 48.

26 Luther Kalender (1909), p. 34.

29 Friedrich Gerke, "Die satanische Anfechtung in der Ars Moriendi und bei

Luther," Theohgische Blatter, II (1932), 321.

31 Hartmann Schcdel, DAS Buch der Chroniken (1493).

32 Propylamwdtgeschicbte, V, 12.

35 J. A. Herbert, lllwninated Manuscripts (1911), p. 238.

38 Michael Reu, Dr. Martin Luthers Leben (1917), p. 42.

40 Propylaenweltgeschichte, V, 14.

43 Luther's Bible (Sept., 1522).

46-49 Albert Sehramm, Die Bilderschmuck der Frubdrucke, X (1927), Tafel 57,

Nos. 91-94.

53 VJLG, XV (1933), opp. p. 16.

61 Luther's Bible (1541). Albert Sehramm, Luther und die Bibel, Tafel 277,

p. 542,

70 F. Lippmann, cd., Lucas Cranach (1895), No. 34.

72-73 Alfred Woltmann, Holbein ( 1866), opp. p. 74.

75 Gcisbcrg, Mder-Katalog, No. 1293*

77 Gcisbcrg, Reformation^ Plate XIV, 7.

78 From a contemporary tract On Aplas von Rom (n.d.).

79 Schreckenbach, p. 64.
81 Barbagallo, IV, 349.
91 Boehmer, p. 135.

94 Boehmer, p. 195.

96 Thomas Wright, History of Caricature (1864), 258, No. 151.

97 Paul Drews, Der evangelische Geistlicbe (1905), 51, No. 39.

106 Schreckenbach, p. 145.

107 Boehmer, p. 179.

110 Hartmann Schcdel, Das Buch der Chroniken (1493).

113 Boehmer, p* 229,

118 Schreckenbach, p. 138.

122 After Holbein, Cf. Bainton, Castellio, pp. xi, 44.

130 Huttcn, Gesprachbuchlein.

131 Clemen, Plu&cbriften, III (1909), 239,

132 PropylaenweltgesMchte, V, 99.

407

HERE I STAND

PAGE

146 Boehmer, p. 289.

153 Justus Hashagen, Martin Luther (1954), p. 41.

156 Passmwl Clmsti mid Antichrist* (reprint 1885).

159 Pflugk-Harttung, p. 523.

165 Bochmer, p. 304.

168 Hjalmar Holimjuisr, Martin Luther (1917), p. 136.

171 PropylaenwdtgeschichtC) V, 87.

173 Schrcckcnhach, p. 103.

174 Schrcckcnbach, p. 100.
182 Pflugk-Harttung, p. 437,
187 lllnstrirte Zrimng (1917),

193 Kunstvcrlsig Bruno Hunsmann, Cassell, No. 32335.

194 Geisberg, Bilder-Katalvg, No. 302,

196 Albert Schramm, Luther und die M>d, Tafcl 107, No. 190.

199- Boehmer, p. 277*

207 Goisbcrg, Reformation, XXVI, 27*

211 Boehmer, t>, 151.

222 Geisberg, Bttder-Katafag, No. 671.

229 Schrcekenbach, p. 90.

233 Luther's Bible (1534, facsimile 1934).

235 Paul Hohcncmscr, ed,, Flu%schriftett$amrnfang Gtistav Freytag (1925), p. 95.

236 Barbagallo, IV, 338.

248 Pflugk-Harmmg, p. 396.

251 Geisbcrg, MJer-Katofo& No. 420*

260 Gunthcr Fran/,, BatiernMcfa p. 41 3.

271 Otto Brandt, I)er deutsche K&uernkrieg (1929), p. 25.

272 Fran/., Bauernkriefr p. 101.

275 Propylaettweltxestihichte) V, 109.

276 Wilhclm Hanscn, Das deiittrbe ftatternttan (1938), p. 70.
279 Otto H. Brandt, Der RWSSC Batterttkrien (1925), opp. p. 1H4.
282-83 Kranx, Bau*rttkric%, p. 215.

284 Geisberg, Rtfortmtimi, X, 7.

285 Above: Fricdrich Ik'/old, Oeschifhte der detttwhen Reformation (1890),

p. 361. Below: Gerhard Rhtcr, Prttpytaettwettxetrhichte (2nd cd*) t p. 255,

289 Adolf Barrels, Dcr Rmter in der deutfcben Vrsw%enbeit (1900), No. 58.

291 Geisberg, JH/ifcr-Karotog, Nos. 423 ami 424.

294 Aurifabcr, Tiscbreden (1568).

297 Geisberg, /)iV detitsche fyiebttlmtratwn (1030), Tafcl 139, No. 309.

306 Clemen, Fluxscbriftcn, I ( 1 907 ) , 69.

307 Geisberg, Die dctttsfbe nucMllustratfan, 111 (1930), Tafcl 142, No. 312,

308 Clemen, Fht&cbrifteij, III (1909) 362.
321 PrvpylaenweltKeschicbtet V, 140.

328 Luther's Bible (1534, facsimile 1934),

329 Albert Sehramm, Luther md die BiM> Tafcl 222, No. 43J

332-33 Albert Schramni v Luther und die BiM, Tafcl 19, No. 28; Tafcl 26, No. 35;

Tafcl 192, No. 336.
338 Above: Geisberg, Die Reformation, IX, 25. Below: Luther K&lender (1909),

pp. 99; icu

343 Hans Prcuss, Martin Luther der Kiinstler (1931), opp. p. 104.
345 Lutber-Jahrhtcb, XV (1933), 107.
349 Geisberg, Reformation, XX, 28,
353 Albert Schramm, Luther und die SiM, Tafcl 129, No.
360 Hjalmar Holmquist, Martin Luther (1917), p. 153.

408

SOURCES OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

364 Lucas Cranach Ausstellung im deutschen Museum Berlin (1937), p. 133.

366 Schreckenbach, p. 71.

371 Charles Schneider, Luther, poete et muslclen (1942), p. 71.

376 Luther's Bible (1534, facsimile 1934), adapted from the tide page of Hosea.

381 Luther Jahrlmch, XV (1933), 106.

383 Schreckenbach, p. 152.

409

INDEX

Aachen, 170, 354

Abel, 141

Abraham, 36, 100, 270, 334, 363, 368-70

Absolution, 71, 137

Adam, 55, 144, 219, 221, 237, 301-2, 310,

334, 363
Address to the Nobility, 136, 152-56,

200

Advent, 350
Accolti, Cardinal, 145
Against the Execrable Bull, 160-62
Against the Peasants, 278-79
Agnus Dei, 27, 306-7
Agricoln, Stephan, 321
Albert of Main/,, 74-76, 79, 80, 82, 84,

92, 133, 159, 168, 175, 188, 191, 198,

200, 204, 205, 2H8, 291, 323-25
Alcandcr, Jerome, 156-60, 168-69, 170,

175, 177, 179, 180, 186-90, 192, 198
Alexander VI, 50
Alsace, 269, 275
Alstedt, 262, 264
America, 30

Amsdorf, Nicolas, 214, 288, 290
Anabaptists, 141-42, 258, 265-67, 281,

284, 311, 312, 314, 325, 375-78
Anfcchtimx, 42, 62, 335, 357, 361. See

also Depression
Annas, 89, 184, 191
Annarcs, 92, 155
Anne, St., 21, 26, 28, 34, 386
Antichrist, 21, 109-11, 135, 156, 160-63,

165-66, 179, 194, 205, 215, 250, 330
Antwerp, 157-58
Apocrypha, 117-18
Apostles' Creed, 176, 298, 336-37, 344
Aquinas, Thomas, 33, 122, 219, 232,

236, 237, 243

Aristotle, 27, 122, 126, 237
Art, 49, 208, 257, 266
Assertion of All the Articles, 164-65
Assisi, 306

Assyria, 217, 239, 355
Asterisks, 107
Astrology, 271

Athenians, 143

Attrition, 81

Augsburg, 91-92, 94, 96, 100, 124, 174,

310, 315, 317, 323-25. See also

Diets
Augsburg Confession, 129, 322, 324-25,

373
Augustine, 58, 61, 86, 115, 123, 133,

218-20, 232, 238, 240-41, 298, 341,

353, 385
Augustinians, 34, 44, 48, 49, 53, 85, 86,

89, 91, 93, 96, 144, 197, 200, 201,

203-4
general of, Gabriele della Volta, 85,

143
cloister in Wittenberg, 52, 59, 60,

203, 290-91
Augustus, 243

Austria, 127, 181, 186, 267, 284
Auto da f 9 158

Baal, 194, 249, 264
Babel, tower of, 49
Babylon, 98, 105, 164, 174, 185, 217,

232, 330, 332-33
Babylonian Captivity, The, 136-40,

176, 180, 183, 188, 200, 202
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 334, 341, 385
Baden, 267

Ban, 88-89, 91, 100, 102, 127, 166
Banishment, 99-101, 262, 314, 315
Baptism, 137-38, 140, 142, 152, 367
Baptism, infant, 208, 257, 259, 260, 267
Baroque, 330
Barth, Karl, 83

Basel, 95, 121, 192, 265, 317, 319
Basel, Council of, 117
Bathsheba, 339

Bavaria, 156, 158, 251, 284, 315, 343
Beatitudes, 232
Becket, a, Thomas, 126
Behemoth, 265
Belvedere, 330
Benedict, St., 32

411

HERE I STAND

Bernard, St., 61, 201, 353
Bethlehem, 25, 220, 353
Bible

authority, 42, 44, 89, 90, 96-98, 162,
164, 177, 185, 189, 208, 367

canon, 332

chair of, 59-60

inspiration, 331

translation, 61, 197, 211, 326-35, 384

see also Word of God
Bigamy, 373-75
Blasphemy, 59, 83, 124, 161, 162, 174,

250, 311, 361, 376
Bohemia, 92, 111, 115, 117, 119, 140,

145, 14H, 155, 178, 277
Bohemian Brethren, 336, &*r nho

Hussite
Bologna, 107
Boniface VIII, 90
Brabant, 121
Brandenburg, 119, 158, 178, 239, 251,

323

Brenz, John, 87, 321
Brethren of the Common Life, 247
Brigitta, St* 48, 69

Buccr, Martin, 87, 134, 181, 319, 320-2!
Bugenhagen, John, 201
Bund, 270-71, 277
Buttdscbuch, 187, 270-71, 284
Bunyan, John, 385
Burgundy, 181, 186
Burning

Luther's work* 143, 147, 151, 158-59 t
172-73, 175, 191

papal bull and canon law, 165*66,
174, 189

Caesar, appeal to, 157, 172, 179

Caiaphas, 89, 142, 191

Cain, 142, 302

Cajctan, 91-98, 101-5, 136, H9, 144-4$,
212

Callistus, SL, 48

Calvinism, 382

Campeggio, Lorenao, 309, 323-24

Canaanite, 362-63

Canute, 69

Capitalism, 237

Carktadt, Andreas, 106, 107, 111-14,
157, 192, 197, 200, 203, 206-8, 210,
214, 256-60, 263-66, 293, 339

Carthusian, 33, 45, 234

Carvajal, Cardinal, 145

Castelo de St. Angdo, 330

Castle Church, 52, 69, 73-74, 79, 104,
169, 197, 201, 203-4, 206, 249, 315
Catechism, 336-39
Quharinus, Ambrosius, 197
Celibacy, 155, 200-201, 300, 352
Celtcs, 'Conrad, 29
Chancellor of Saxony, Briick, 321-22
Charlemagne, 175, 181
Charles 1 of England, 164
Charles V, 10*, 127, 142, 151, 157, 158,
160, 162, 166, 167, 170, 173, 175-78,
181, 183, 186, 188-92, 251, 317,
322-23, 325, 375, 381-82
Charybdis, 255
Christ

deserted, 62, 231, 370, 386

example, 231

incarnation, 60, 123, 138

judge, 29, 34, 58, 62, $65

kingdom of, 241, 311, 351

love, 89

mediator, 66, 68, 22*, U6

merits, 83

rcvealer, 220-24, 380, W>

Saviour, 59, 65, 69

sinicssncss, 46

victor, 66, 310, 357

we &h& Jesus, Passion
Christmas, 206, 221, 30,?, 350
Chrysostom, Sr*, 7i
Church

allied with state, 141, 152, 241

condition of, 305

doctrine of, 6H> 1*8, 140*42, 310-H

gathered, 141
Cistercians, 32

Clement VII, 316
Clergy, powers of, 137-40
Cloister

life in, 37-38

Luther's entry, 23, 34-36
Colmrg, 322
Cologne, 143, 145, 162, 165, 166, 170,

310, 323
Columbus, 30
Communism, 267
Compcmclft, 367
Cnnciliarixm, 145, 154, 164
Confession, 46, 49, 54-56, 71-72, 78,

B7, 197,206,209
Confirmation, 137
Conrad, Bishop, 28!
Conscience, 185, 194, 318, HI, 35U 356

412

INDEX

Consistory, papal, 144-47

Constance, 305, 317

Constance, Council of, 115-18

Constant! ne, 108

Constantine, Donation of, 124

Consubstantiation, 140

Contrition, 71-72, 78, 81, 86, 88, 137,

356

Corpus Christi, 111, 324
Corsica, 306
Council

appeal to, 97-99, 147, 151
authority of, 90, 102, 116-17, 119,

177, 185, 190, 367
Counsels of perfection, 45, 201, 227
Counter Reformation, 159, 192, 247,

250, 284, 385

Cranach, Lucas, 69, 155, 292, 328, 330
Cranmcr, Thomas, 384
Creation, 216, 221, 235, 367
Croesus, 293
Cromwell, Oliver, 277
Cross of Christians, 262
Crotus Rubcanus, 123
Crusades, 72, 92, 93, 103, 203, 236, 268
Cujus rcgio, 316
Cum Postquam, 102
Curia, 80, 101, 104, 105, 131, 134, 143-

44, 160, 164, 168-69, 173

Damascus, 60

Damnation, 64, 82, 194, 309

Daniel, 164, 205, 261, 263-64, 378

Dante, 243

David, 73, 144, 218-19, 261, 280, 320,
330, 334, 339, 343, 361, 363

Death

Art of Dym& 29, 357
dance of, 29
penalty, 241, 250, 267, 376

Decretals, 95, 96, 98, 105, 108-9, 115,
118, 250

Degrees, academic, 259

Denmark, 69

Depression, 28, 33, 42, 55-56, 218, 295,
359-72

Deuteronomy, 237

Devil, 37, 42, 44-45, 54, 66, 89, 179-80,
193-95, 200-201, 209-9, 212-13, 218,
220, 240, 245, 253, 263, 284, 288,
308-9, 328, 337, 341, 352, 361-63,
367, 370, 374. Sw also Lucifer,
Satan

Devils, 27, 30, 281, 3tt

Diets

Augsburg (1518), 91, 92, 93, 96
Worms (1521), 90, 91, 105, 167-89,

191, 194, 212, 215, 238, 252-53, 263,
286, 315-16, 358, 380

Niirnberg (1522), 209, 211, 214, 251,

315; (1524) 316
Speyer (1526), 317; (1529) 318-20,

375

Augsburg (1530), 315, 323
Diseases, Luther's, 45, 56, 195, 292, 361,

383

Divorce, 375
Doctor's degree, Luther's, 59, 85, 191,

331, 337
Dominicans, 73, 77, 87, 89, 97, 103, 134,

144

Domitian, 48
Dostoevski, 385

Doubt, 44, 51, 58, 91, 194, 364-65
Drinking, 298
Diirer, Albrecht, 62, 125, 128-30, 157,

191-92, 330

Easter, 45, 334, 346, 350
Ebcrnburg, 132-34, 168, 181, 213
Eck, John of Ingolstadt, 107-20, 132,

143-45, 150, 156-58, 160-63, 166,

169, 237, 324, 330
Eck, John of Trier, 182-83, 185
Economics, 236, 268-69, 277, 384
Education, 23-25, 27, 68, 235, 335
Edwards, Jonathan, 385
Egypt, 217-18, 266
Eisenach, 193, 377
Elbe, 52, 72
Elect, 262
Eleuthcrius, 125
Elijah, 194, 261, 378
Elisabeth, mother of the Baptist, 218
Elizabeth, St., 193
Elster Gate, 165
Emser, Jerome, 330
Endor, witch of, 140
England, English, 114, 121, 127, 130,

169, 180, 252, 268, 314, 380, 384
Epicurean, 177
Epiphany, 350
Equalitarianism, 259-60, 270
Erasmus, 87, 125-29, 131, 137, 139, 142,

157, 159, 169, 170, 172, 176, 180,

192, 217, 226, 247, 252-57, 265-67,
298, 323, 324, 337, 344, 385

Erbe, Fritz, 377

413

HERE I STAND

Erfurt, 25, 27, 32-34, 46, 48, 52, 87,
112, 143, 158, 179, 195, 292

Esau, 254, 288

Eschatology, 149, 295

Ethics, 225-45

Eucharist, 121. Sec also Mass

Europe, 69, 127, 236, 268, 375, 383

Evangelical experience, 60

Eve, 55, 301, 363

Excommunication of Luther, 96, 98,
126, 147, 148, 168, 170, 177, 189

Exsurge Doming 145-48, 156-57, 160-
62, 168, 177

Extreme unction, 137

E?.ekiel, 334

Em, 232

Fnber, John, 330

Faith, 65, 83, 139, 141, 142, 154, 155,
176, 206, 217, 223-24, 22H, 230,
300, 314, 322, 325, 331, 378

Fall of man, 221, 235-36, 237, 310

Family, 236, 240, 268, 298-99

Fasting, 45, 206. Sec also Mortification

Ferdinand of Austria, 127, 251, 267,
315-17, 320, 323

Ferdinand of Spain, 181

Folklore, 26-27

Forgiveness, 228, 351, 358

Fortuna, 124

France, French, 21, 100, 114, 121, 127,
130, 170, 180, 186, 191, 233, 248,
268, 28H, 299, 317, 328, 380, 382

Francis I, 127

Francis, St M 126

Franciscans, 53, 144, 205, 237

Franconia, 156, 276

Frankenhausen, 37H

Frankfurt, 133, 380

Fraticelli, HI

Frederick Barharossa, 203

Frederick the Wise, 53, 69-72, 78-79,
86, 90-93, 97-100, 104-5, 128, 144,
148, 155, 158, 160, 166-73, 178, 180,
183, 186-89, 191, 193, 200, 203, 205,
209-11, 248-51, 263, 278, 280, 286,
315-16, 330, m, 342, 344

Freedom of the Christian Mm, 136,

163, 177, 180, 188, 230-31
Freedom of the Will, On the, 253
Free will, 253-55
Freiburg im Brefogau, 95
Fritz, courc fool, 168

Frohen, John, 121, 125

r Jacob, 75-76, 80, 104, 237

Gabriel, 218, 291, 296, 365, 367
Galatians, 60, 125, 293
Galilee, 133, 353
Gamaliel, 188, 209, 325
Genesis, 293
Gentiles, 86, 117, 255
George, I>uk<% 107, 108, 111, 116, 119,
158, 184, 188, 209, 212, 252, 254,
256, 2KO, 315, 330, 333, 344, 374
George of Brandenburg, 323
George, St, 112

Gernun language, 25, 116, 127-28,
m, W, WH, 206, 326, 330, 332,
3-U), 347
German mmm, 92, 160, 175, 180, 184,

186, 247

Germany, 22, 50, 69, 73-75, 80, 83, 85,
87, W, 95, 103, 105, 121, 130-33,
HM5, H7, 155, 167, 172, W, 187,
188, 194, 26H, 2*U 296, 305, 316,
317, 322, , W, 384
GethKcnwne, 242
Citation, 180, IK*, IKK
Glut/,, Kaspar, 2K7-8H
God

absolute, 219
abyss of, 57
dualism, 241
Father, 357
hidden, 21H t 241
holy, 42, 45, 62
justice of, 5H-5V, 370
love of, <*, 223,361
majesty of, 41-42, 57-59, 62, 76, 183,

2W/22J, 255, W, 3B5
nwrcy <>f, 63, 65-6$, 68, 82, 242, 255,

3H5

substance of, H9
terror of, K 1 *S t 183
vengeance, JHO
wisdom, 34$
wrath of, 2H, 54, 58, 65, 68, 162, 242,

278

Goliuth, 107, 144 2HO
Good Hope, Cttj>e of, 30
<x<tspci, 9H, 1 *S, 14*, W, 176, 191, 242,

Gothic, 25, 72

Grace, 34, 39, W, W, 350, 352

Greece, 217

Greek Church, 115, H<5 t 129

4*4

INDEX

Greek language, 88, 106, 113, 125, 129,

156, 197, 266, 326 t 340, 385
Gregorian chant, 342
Gregory I, 88

Hadrian VI, 247, 250-51,253

Halberstadt, 74

Halle, 47, 198, 292

Hannibal, 288

Hapsburg, 74, 103, 131, 181, 186, 251,

267, 315, 317
Heathen, 343

Heaven, 57, 218, 296, 300, 343
Hebrew, 85, 113, 123-24, 156, 211, 213,

259, 326, 345, 356, 3H5
Hebrews, Epistle to, 332
Hedio, Caspar, 321
Heidelberg, 86, 134
Hcinrich of Zuctphcn, 360
Hell, 28, 30, 33, 34, 50, 102, 218, 220,

309, 357, 374-75
Henry VIII, 127, 252, 256
Hercules, 121

"Here I stand," 185-86, 386
Heresy, 90, 91, 93, 101, 143, 145, 163,

186, 190
Heretic, 89, 98, 101-4, 119, 121, 147-49,

155, 162, 175, 177-78, 181, 186, 252
Herod, 368
History, 30, 217

Hoehstratcn, Jacob von, 121, 122, 124
Hohen7,ollcrn, 74
Holbein, Hans, 72, 122
Holcot, Robert, 121
Holiness, 45, 260
Holy Roman Empire, 22, 103, 130, 144,

167, 181, 184, 325, 382
Holy Spirit. Sec Spirit
Holy, terror of, 41, 183, See also God
Hope, 54
Horeb, 194

Hours, canonical, 37, 195
Humanism, 123-24, 129, 131, 134, 156-

57, 170, 176, 252, 267, 336
Hungary, 169
Hus, John, 102, 115-21, 145, 155, 165,

176-77, 185

Hussites, 111, 116, 119, 140, 203, 248
Hutten, a, 244
Hutten, Ulrich von, 130-35, 148, 152,

159-60, 168, 170, 173, 176-77, 180-

81, 188, 192, 212-13
Hymns, 345-47
Aus tiefer Not> 346

Hymns cont'd
Em fcste Burg, 345, 370-71
Gelobest scist Du, 303
Nu fretit eiich) 66-67
Von Hivmi el Hoch, 303

Images, 198, 207, 210, 260, 306

Individualism, 141

Indulgences, 30, 47, 69, 71-85, 86, 89,

91-92, 98, 102, 105, 118, 124, 126,

127, 139, 143, 145, 155, 165, 176,

197-98

Inquisitors, 116, 172
Interdict, 173

Inwardness, 126, 242, 260, 262, 264, 36T
Ironsides, 277
Isaac, 36, 270, 368-70, 383
Isabella, 157, 181
Isaiah, 220, 344
Ishmaclttcs, 217
Israel, 111, 185,266,273, 363
Italy, Italian, 49-50, 73, 80, 100, 107,

131-32, 144

Jacob, 254, 328-30

James, Epistle of, 177, 331, 332

Jansscn, Johannes, 271, 318

Jena, 263

Jericho, 154

Jerome of Croatia, 116

Jerome, St., 71

Jerusalem, 30, 82, 105, 181, 232-33, 353

Jesuit, 255, 346

Jesus, 71, 106, 161, 174, 191, 216, 251,

337, 343, 350. Sec also Christ
Jews, 86, 157, 162, 185, 227, 232, 255,

314, 327, 379-80
Jezebel, 194

Joachim of Brandenburg, 169, 251, 315
John Frederick, 263, 330, 344, 381
John of Saxony, 263, 278, 323-24, 342,

375

John, St., 48, 332, 346, 349, 3<$0
Jonah, 55, 355-57, 368
Jonas, Justus, 201, 203, 303, 321
Joseph (Old Testament), 217
Joseph (New Testament), 218, 288,

353-54, 367
Josiah, 249
Jost, 303
Judaism, 225
Judas, 48, 350
Jude, 332
Judgment, day of, 29, 32

415

HERE I STAND

Julius II, 68, 75, 90, 99, 147, 163
Justification, 64-65, 332

Kappell, 322
Keys, power of, 81, 189
Kierkegaard, S0rcn, 385
Knights, 131, 193, 212
Kopp, Leonard, 286, 290
Koran, 239

Lairy, 138, 145, 172, 189, 198, 251

Lang, Cardinal, 178, 191, 251, 309

Lapland, 27

Larcran Council V, 117

Larimer, 1 1 ugh, 3 84

Latin language, 24-25, 79, 88, 156, 186,

191, 206, 339-40, 345, 34H
Latomus, Bartholomew, 197
Law

canon, 103, 114, 135, 141, 166, 176

civil, 24

Cicnmn, 269, 351

Old Testament, 310, 331, 334

Roman, 40, 268
Layman, Luther quoting Rmormitamts

* on, 96, 116, 117
League

Catholic, 267, 315

Swabian, 280-83
Leah, 299

Legalism, 36, 257, 260
Lem'/Jg, 108, 115, 124, 165, 212, 2V l %
308

debate, 111-21, 132, W, 182, W

University, 53, 107-8, 111
Lembcrgcr, George, 329-30
Lent, 45, 126, 350

Leo X, 47, 73, 74, 76, 79, H5, 87, 92,
97, V8, 104, 111, 147-48, 157-58,
161-64, 251, 316
Leviathan, 265
Leviticus, 327

Liberty, religious, 128, 147, 155, 242 %
249, 264, 267, 312, 314, MH, *2S,
375-78

Lichtcnburg, 160
Lie, 242, 374
Liege, 159
Uppus, 303

Lhemy of the Gmrniw, 179
Literalism, 258, 319
Liturgy, 311,325, 339-40, 344
Littkau, 69
Lochau, 312
Lombard, Peter, 122

416

Lord's Prayer, 298, 301, 336-37, 358
Lord's Supper, 140, 214, 258, 265, 318-

20, 339, 374. Sec also Mass
Louvain, 95, 143, 145, 158, 162, 192
Low Countries, 156-57, 181, 192, 342
Lucifer, 307, 309, Sec also Devil, Satan
Ludwig of the Palatinate, 187, 189
Ludwig of Saxony, 352
Luke, St., 49, 54/134
Luther, Martin

birth, 22

schooling, 22-25, 27

early religious disquiet, 25-30

entry into the monastery, 30-36

novitiate, 37-38

recurrence of disquiet; the first mass,
39-44

self-help through mortification, 44-
46

the merits of the saints; trip to
Rome, 46-51

permanent residence in Wittenberg,

influence of Sutupitx, 53

exploring confession, 54-56

the inadequacy of mysticism, 56-57

doubts as to the justice of God, 58

blasphemy, 59

appointment to the chair of Bible,
60

the evangelical cxrx?rience, 60-63

justification by faith 64-66

commencement of reform in theo-
logical training, 69

indulgences at Wittenberg, 69-70

lirst protests, 71-72

indulgence for St Peter*s, TesRel,
74-78

Niuety-Fhv Times, 79-83

reported to Rome, H4

Heidelberg Disputation, 86

Dominican assault, 87

attack on penance, papal primacy,
the ban, HH

reply of Pricrias, 89-90

case referred to Cajetan in Ger*
many, 90-92

interviews with Gajetan, 93-97

threatening exile, 98-101

O/w Pttsttjuwt, defines indulgences,
102

im;Krriai election affords respite, 103

Milw/. appointed to negotiate, 104-5

arrival of Alcbnchthon, 106

INDEX

Luther, Martin confd
challenge of Eck, 107-8
Luther suspects the pope is Anti-
christ, 109-10
Leipzig, debate, 111-20
the endorsement of Hus, 115-20
dissemination of Luther's writings,

121
Renaissance and Reformation, 123-

Erasmus and Luther, 125-28
Melanchthon and Luther, 128-29
Diirer and Luther, 129-30
German nationalism and the Refor-
mation, 130-35
Hutten, Sickingen, and Luther,

130-35
respite and writing, October 1519-

October 1520, 136
"Babylonian Captivity and the sacra-
ments, 137-42

persecution resumed, 142-43
the bull Exsurge, 145-47
Luther's attitude: incendiary and

apocalyptic, 148-50
appeal to the emperor, 151
Address to the Nobility, 152-54
publication of the bull, 156-58
burning of Luther's books, 159-61
Against the Execrable Bull, 161-62
Freedom of the Christian Man, 163-

Assertion of All the Articles, 164-65
Luther's burning of the bull, 166
the German constitution, 167
parties on the eve of Worms, 168-70
hearing promised and recalled, 170-

Aleander's bungling of the prosecu-
tion, 175

violent temper at the Diet, 176
Aleander's speech, 177-78
invitation to Luther renewed, 178-79
Glapion's attempt at mediation, 180-

81
Luther before the Diet of Worms,

181-90

the Edict of Worms, 186-90
Luther's trial compared to Christ's

passion, 191-92
at the Wartburg, 193
depression and disease, 194-95
literary labors, 197

Luther, Martin cont'd

reformation at Wittenberg, 197-204

On Monastic Vows, 201

the mass, 202

outbreak of violence, 203-4

exploratory return to Wittenberg,
205

tumult: Carlstadt and iconoclasm,
206-9

Luther invited to return, 210-12

the return: plea for moderation,
212-14

Luther's theology, 215-25

nature, history, philosophy inade-
quate as revelation, 216-20

Christ the sole revealer, 220-25

Luther's ethics: the menace to
morals, 225-28

the ground of goodness, 225-31

the callings, 232-35

economics, 236-37

politics, 238-41

church and state, 241-46

conflict with the Counter Reforma-
tion, 247-52

recoil of the moderates: Erasmus,
252-56

insurgence of the Puritans: Carl-
stadt, 256-60

the revolutionary saints: Miintzer,
_ 260-64

rival movements: Zwinglianism and
Anabaptism, 265-68

social unrest: Peasants' War, 268-86

Luther's marriage, home life, Table
Talk, views of marriage, 286-304

dissemination of the reform by
pamphleteering, 305-10

problems of Church administration,
310-12

the visitation, 313-14

the protest at Speyer, 315-18

attempt at Protestant alliance: Mar-
burg Colloquy, 318-22

Augsburg Confession, 322-25

Bible translation, 326-35

catechisms, 336-39

liturgy, 339-40

music, 340-44

hymns, 345-47

preaching, 348-57

prayer, 358

Luther's persistent religious difficul-
ties, 359-72

417

HERE I STAND

Luther, Mzrtin-cont'd

the bigamy of the Landgrave Philip,
373-74

the Anabaptists, 375-78

the Jews, 379-80

the emperor, 380-82

estimate of Luther, 382-86
Lutheran, 318-20, 339, 374, 382
Lyra, Nicholas, 122

Maccabees, 117

Magdeburg, 33, 74, 288

Magistrate, 152, 236, 238, 241-45, 262,

313, 351

Magliana, 144, 147
Magnificat, 27, 197, 242
Mama, 74, 159, 166, 173, 239, 296
Man

depravity of, 113, 143, 211

nature of, 56, 253

r<? also Fall, Natural man
Manassch, 73
Mansfcld, 27, 296, 383
Marburg, 319-20
Mark, St,, 134
Marram, 157
Marriage

of clergy and religious, 155, 198-201,
209, 247, 252, 260, 286

Luther's, 286-304

Luther's views of, 298-302, 352

sacrament of, 137
Martyrdom, 161, 175, 185, $92, 264,

288, 360, 380
Mary Magdalene, 29
Mary, Virgin, 28, 32, 38, 46, 49, 58, 70,
79, 95, 205, 218, 233, 262, 270, 306,
328, 330, 353-54, 367
Mass, 39, 139, 202, 204, 249

both kinds, 140, 198, 203, 206

canon of, 339-40

consubstamiatitm, 140

for the dead, 50, 198

elevation, 203, 340

endowed, 204, 249

German, 209, 339-40, 342, See <fao
Liturgy

Luther's first, 39, 183

private, 202

reform of, 206

sacrifice, 139, 202, 206, 339

transubstanuacion, 138-39

at Wittenberg, 249-50
Master of Arts, 27

Matthew, St., 134, 195, 341, 349, 374
Maximilian, Emperor, 90-93, 103, 133,

157, 181

Medici, 74, 79, 93, 316
Meissen, Bishop of, 158, 209-11
Mclanchthon, Philip, 106, 112, 124,
128-29, 139, 155, 165, 194, 197, 201,
208, 210, 214, 226, 271, 296, 303,
313, 339, 320-21, 324, 336, 345,
377-78, 383
"Melancolia," 129
Merits, 46-51, 54, 69, 71, 81, 83, 98,

102, 225, 300, 334, 336
Mcrschurg, 158
Middle Ages, 25, 27, 44, 103, 111, 166,

236, 26H, 298, 336, 344, 380
Middle Way, 256
Midianircs, 280

Miltitz, Carl von, 1Q3-4, 160, 163
Ministry, 273

lay, 259

Luther's, 382-83
Moab, 255
Mochau, Anna, 200
MonastR-iMii, 22, 32-33, 45, 138, 232,

237, 300, 306

Monastic ^uv O/i 201, 204
Morals* See Ft hies
Moravia, 379
Mortification, 45, 128

Moses, 22, 41, 48, 71, 232, 275, 278,
327, 330, 3H*f

Mtinstcr, 37H

Mimt/cr, Thoiius 25H-64, 266-67, 270,

277-K4, 340, *?H
Music, 208, 257, 266, 340-47, 363

choral, 342

not contentious, 343

in des|*md?ncy, 363

modes, 342

polyphonic, 342, 344
56-57, 364

418

Naples, H4, 1H1

Nationalism, 21, 127, 130-35, 184

Nativity, 353-55, 368

Natural law, 227

Natural man, 239, 242* &?<? also Man

Nature, 216-17, 255

Nazareth, 233, 353-54

Nebtichttdne/jMir, 263-64

Nehtmiah, 232

Neighbor, love of, 231, 239, 301, 351

INDEX

Netherlands. See Low Countries
New Testament, 125-26, 197, 226, 257,

312, 327, 329, 331-32, 334, 336
Nimrod, 92

Ninety-Five Theses, 79-84, 87, 121
Nineveh, 355
Noah, 129, 172, 296, 334
Nonresistance, 135, 149, 212, 274, 381
Novitiate, 37
Niirnberg, 29, 87, 97, 109, 124, 127, 157,

252, 287, 290, 310, 315, 317

Oaths, 267

Obelisks, 107

Occam, William, 122, 219

Oecolampadius, John, 319, 321

Old Testament, 62, 117, 232, 262, 326-

27, 331, 334, 374
Ordination, 137-38
Orlamiinde, 214, 258, 263
Osiander, Andreas, 321
Ovid, 190

Pacifism, 267. See also Nonresistance
Paduska, John, 119
Palatinate, 178, 187, 189, 251, 276
Palestine, 328, 379
Palm Sunday, 179
Pamphleteering, 305
Pantheon, 75, 330
Papacy

antiquity, 98, 108, 114-15, 175
infallibility, 89, 98, 126-27, 248
primacy, 114-15, 164
Papacy at Rome, The, 136
Paradise, 32, 78, 296, 368
Paradox, 254

Paris, 95, 112, 143, 156, 197, 310
Pascal, Blaise, 385
Passion of Christ, 191, 330, 370
Pastor, Ludwig von, 75
Pater Noster, 38, 48, 50. See also

Lord's Prayer
Patmos, 191, 193, 197
Paul, St., 48, 58, 60, 64, 75, 76, 87, 106,

108, 124, 128, 143, 147, 164, 176,

225, 232, 238, 254, 266, 298, 331-32,

334, 349, 350, 381, 385
Peasants, 26, 86, 131-33, 186, 311, 339
Peasants' War, 265, 268-85, 287, 293,

316

Pecca Fortiter, 225
Penance, 54, 57, 81, 86, 88, 102-3, 118,

137, 143

Penitence, On, 121
Pentecost, 346, 350
Perfection, unattainable, 46, 227, 239,

254

Persia, 217
Perugia, 306
Peter, Epistle of, 332
Peter, St., 29, 48, 56, 75-78, 80, 98,

108, 114, 147, 162, 169, 172, 191,

233, 270, 331, 349, 350
Peter's, St., basilica of, 48-49, 74-77,

80, 132

Pfeflferkorn, John, 123-24, 380
Pharaoh, 182, 185, 198, 259, 273
Pharisees, 143, 192
Philip of Hesse, 280, 316-20, 322-25,

373-75, 382
Philosophy, 63, 219
Pilate, 48, 50, 89, 191-92, 245
Pilgrimages, 30, 48-49, 126-27, 155, 367
Pinturicchio, 49
Pirkheimer, Willibald, 124-25, 157, 181,

252

Pius II, 147, 163
Political theory, 239-45, 380-82. See

also Magistrate, Resistance, Non-
resistance, Liberty, Revolution
Poor relief, 207, 210
Pope
authority of, 89-90, 95-96, 102, 108,

114, 126, 367

contrasted with Christ, 155
see also Papacy
Portuguese, 157
Prague, 119

Prayer, 57-58, 195, 206, 358
Preaching, 349-58, 383
Predestination, 115, 253-55. See also

Free will
Prierias, Sylvester, 89, 91, 93, 121, 124,

144, 145, 149
Priesthood of all believers, 137, 145,

152-54, 248, 270
Protestants, 255, 257, 261-62, 286, 318,

324-25, 375

Protestation at Speyer, 318
Prussia, 27, 301
Psalms, 60-62, 68, 197, 208, 267, 335,

337, 345-46, 367
Pubelsberg, 27
Purgatory, 28, 47, 50, 71, 76, 78-83,

88, 102, 104, 108, 117, 143, 176,

36*

419

HERE I STAND

Puritan, 1<54, 256-60, 275, 382
Pyramus, 208

Quakers, 259

Rachel, 299
Raphael, 365
Rauebcrger, 363
Reason
inadequate, 59, 63, 125, 219, 223, 254,

255, 334, 355, 357
right, 95, 166, 185, 239, 254
Reformation, the, 123-24, 127, 207,

210, 269, 271, 280, 309, 345, 348
Relics of the saints, 47, 49 f 69-72, 76,

104, 203, 249, 296
Renaissance, 21, 25, 27, 28, 49-50, 123-

30, 141, 237, 247, 299, 330
Rent, 273

Repentance, 64, 88
Resistance, 243, 380-82
Resolutions, 88, 121
"Respectively** in papal bull, 1 16 f 147,

162

Restitution, 257, 267
Resurrection, 150, 358, 370
Reuchlin, John, 124, 134, 143, 158
Revelation, 116, 130, 216-25, 261, 361-

71, 380
Revelation, book of, 197, 327, 329, 330,

332
Revolution, 178, 205, 243, 24tf, 252,

260-64, 280, 377. Sec also Resist-
ance

Rhaw, Georg, 112, 344
Rhine, 156, 157, 168, 254 f 269
Riario, Cardinal, 134, 144
Richard of Greiffenklau, 105, 112, 144,

160, 182, 188, 212
Rink, Meichior, 378
Romans, of antiquity, 253
Romans, Epistle to, 60, 65, 68, 125,

238

Romantic love, 299
Rome, Church of, 88, 89, 92 t 95, 98,

100, 105, 108, 114-16, 128, 131, 134-

37, 142-44, 147 f 154, 157, 161, 176,

190, 214, 248, 252, 254 $** *lso

Papacy
Rome, city, 48, 50-52, 69, SO, 82, 85,

86, 88, 90, 95, 97-101, 105, 120, 123,
131-32, 170, 172, 2I7 f 288, 309, 367
Rose, golden, 104, 169
Rotterdam, 253

Rofcdaloxvski, Wensel, 119
Rupf, Conrad, 342

Sabbatarianism, 259-60, 337-38

Sachs, Hans, 310

Sacrament??, 50, 54, 68, 126, 137-40, 143,

189, 224, 248, 257-58, 265, 266, 299.

Sec also Baptism, Lord's Supper,

Mass, Confirmation, Marriage,

Penance, Extreme unction, Ordi-

nation
Safe conduct, 92, 108, 147, 172, 178-80,

186, 189
Saints
AH Saints', 69, 71, 76, 79, 85, 203,

248-49

canonr/ation, 155
cult, 337
despised, 217
intercession, 30, 58
sec also Relics, Merits
Salvation, 82, H6, 126, 225
Salzburg, 100
Samarirun, 64
Sanballat, 252
Sarah, 36H-70
Satan, 135, 149, 160-65, 172, 194, 218,

295, 309, 362. See also Devil
Satisfaction, 71
Saxony, 115-16, IIB-IS, 134, 158, 232,

249, 262-65* 277, 294, 310-11, 316,

317, tt9
ducal, 107
electoral, AV, 76, 99, 107, 178, 311,

313, 319, m, 327
Sr*& &i*j<7<*, 4K t 51
Schcdcl, Hartuunn, 29
Scholasticism, 121, 139, 141, 159, 166,

219

Sduwgauer, Martin, 330
Sch<*f*, 23-25, 27, 235, 335. See also

Education
Sctmm, Duns, 122
Scripture, See Bible
Seyll*, 255

Seal, I .utter'* 222, 353
Sedition, 376, See alw Revolution
Scnfl, Ltidwig, 344
Sernwn mi Qomt Works^ 136, 232
Scnnon on the Mount, 4<S, 240, 267
Sermons, 88-89, See (tlw Preaching

Sicily, 306

420

INDEX

Sickingen, Franz von, 131, 133-34, 148,

158, 168, 181, 197, 212-13
Simony, 176
Sin, mortal, 86
Sinai, 41, 367
Sins, seven, 54
Sixtus IV, 79
Sleep Well, 159
Sodom, 149
Soldiers, 234-35
Spain, Spaniard, 103, 114, 121, 130, 142-

43, 157, 168, 172-73, 176, 180-81,

186, 248, 268, 273-74, 380, 385
Spalatin, George, 90, 100, 101, 134, 160,

179, 186, 194, 195, 197, 204-5, 209,

287-89, 290, 327
Spengler, Lazarus, 127, 157
Spirit

general, 208, 257-58, 266, 319, 326
the Holy, 138, 147-48, 261, 263-64,

343, 352

versus letter, 257, 260-61
State, the, 142, 243. See also Political

theory
Staupitz, John, 53, 54, 56, 58-60, 86,

88, 94, 96, 100, 104, 143, 174, 195,

226, 256

Stotternheim, 21
Strassburg, 87, 197, 265, 315, 317-19,

324-25

Sturm, Caspar, 179, 181
Swabia, 306-7
Switzerland, Swiss, 121, 213, 267, 284,

310, 317-20, 324

Table Talk, 23, 295-98, 377

Tarshish, 355

Tauler, John, 353

Ten Commandments, 54, 75, 226, 232,

244, 298-99, 336-37
Tetzel, John, 77-79, 84, 87, 89, 105,

108, 145

Thankfulness, 230
Theocracy, 257, 262
Theology, A German, 133
Thief, the penitent, 29, 127
Thisbe, 208
Thuringia, 25, 52, 194, 213, 276, 329,

378

Tithe, 273-74
Torgau, 69, 158, 286, 312
Transubstantiation. See Mass
Treasury of merits, 47, 81, 94-96, 98,

102, 145. See also Merits

Trebonius, 25

Trinity, 107, 108, 190, 219

Trinity, The Roman, 131-32

Turks, 92, 117, 147-48, 162, 164, 185,

208, 227, 239, 253, 261, 296, 317,

344, 355

Twelve Articles, 273
Tyndale, William, 384
Tyranny, 163, 184, 243

Ubiquity, 140, 224

Ulfflas, 326

Ulm, 310, 317

Ulrich of Wurttemberg, 244

Unamuno, 385

Uniasts, 248

Unigenitus, 94

Usingen, 87

Usury, 107, 236-37, 277, 351

Valla, Lorenzo, 115, 124

Vatican, 93, 104, 123, 164, 170

Venice, 288, 365

Vergil, 27, 368

Veronica, 48

Vienna, 107, 158

Violence, 175, 190, 203-6, 209, 214, 243,

249, 250, 262, 274
Violence, Luther's, 149, 178, 189, 250,

280

Visitation, 210, 313-14
Vocation, 22, 201, 232, 245
Vow, Luther's, 22, 34, 39, 96
Vows, 177, 201
Vulgarity, 296-97, 373, 380
Vulgate, 88, 125, 326, 328, 345

Walther, 342

War, 240, 267

Wartburg, 193-95, 197, 198, 202, 205,
210, 214, 286, 322, 327

Watts, Isaac, 384

Westminster, 384

Westphalia, 378

William of Anhalt, 33, 45

Wise Men, 71, 175, 368

Witchcraft, 124

Wittenberg, 46, 52, 69, 73-74, 76, 78,
85, 87, 97, 100, 104, 106, 111, 125,
133, 155, 157-58, 197, 201, 203-6,
209-15, 232, 247-50, 252, 256, 258,
265, 277, 281, 284, 286, 288, 306-10,
315-16, 323, 327, 336, 339, 342,
344, 348, 351-52, 383
Concord, 320

421

HERE I STAND

Wittenberg canted Wiirzburg, 281

University of, 53, 73-74, 85, 94, 97, Wyclif, John, 115-17, 155, 177, 185

99, 101, 106-7, 158, 172, 200 7ionhm 380

Word of God, 135, 140-41, 181, 185, 7kk7 277

214, 216, 224, 250, 271, 274, 277-78, 7ulsdorf 292

315, 318, 326, 331, 337, 341, 343, ^ch, 213, 265, 267, 319

348-49, 377 7,\vickau, 208, 214, 259, 260, 265, 312

Works, good, 54, 228, 331, 334 '/willing, Gabriel, 197, 200, 203, 207
Worms, Edict of, 149, 186, 189-90, 273, 210, 214, 312

316, 318. See also Diets wingH, Ulrich, 121, 258, 266-67, 312
Wurttemberg, 87, 244 314, 318-19, 321-22

422

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